Solutions are more complex than expected
Water is not just H2O molecules. It contains a number of molecular species including
ortho and
para water molecules, water molecules with different isotopic compositions such as HDO and H218O, such water molecules as part of weakly-bound but partially-covalently linked molecular clusters containing one, two, three or four hydrogen bonds, and hydrogen ion and hydroxide ion species. Apart from such molecules there are always adventitious and self-created solutes in liquid water. Distilled and deionized water contain significant and varying quantities of contaminating ions. Often the criteria for ‘purity’ is the conductivity, but this will not show ionic contaminants at nanomolar, or even somewhat higher, concentrations due to the relatively high conductivity of the H+ and OH- ions naturally present. Other materials present will include previously dissolved solutes, dissolved gasses dependent on the laboratory atmosphere, gaseous nanobubbles , material dissolved or detached from the containing vessels, solid particles and aerosols (also dependent on the laboratory history) entering from the gas phase, and redox materials produced from water moleculesand other solutes produced on standing and homeopathic processing. Liquid water is clearly a very complex system even before the further complexity of molecular clusters, gas-liquid and solid-liquid surfaces, reactions between these materials, the consequences of physical and electromagnetic processing and the addition of ethanol are considered. Any or a combination of these factors may cause 'memory' of past solutes and processing in water. Some of these solutions are capable of causing non-specific clinical effects whereas others may cause effects specifically linked to the solution's (and laboratory) history, as outlined below.
There are numerous examples of the slow equilibration in aqueous solution. Thus, it can take several days for the effects of the addition of salts to water to finally stop oscillating and such solutions are still changing after several months showing a large-scale (~100 nm) domain structure. Also, water restructuring after infrared radiation persists for more than a day, and water photoluminescence changes over a period of days. Changes to the structure of water are reported to last for weeks following exposure to resonant RLC (resistance inductance capacitance) circuits . Conductivity oscillations (~ 0.5 Hz) at low concentrations of salts also show the poor tendency to equilibrium in such solutions. Succussion, by itself, has been shown to be 'remembered' for at least 10 minutes as solitons (that is, standing waves).
It has been found that clathrate hydrate nucleation is faster in solutions that once formed the clathrates but where it had been subsequently dissociated for periods up to several hours. Thus the solution shows a 'memory effect' of its previous history, although it is likely that this is due to retained super-saturated gas concentrations . Other interesting examples of the memory of water are the Mpemba effect and the observation that hot water pipes are more likely to burst than adjacent cold water pipes. In both effects, water seems to remember whether it has been recently hot or cold even when subsequently cooled. The Mpemba effect is a well proven phenomenon that also seems to be caused by unexpected solute and time effects and is described and explained elsewhere.
Explanation of homeopathy on the basis of water crystals is unconvincing as such crystals appear to be artifacts and, even as proposed, the effect of body fluid ions would be to immediately 'dissolve' them.
There is a strange occurrence, similar to the ‘memory of water’ but unconnected to it, in enzyme chemistry where an effectively non-existent material still has a major effect; enzymes prepared in buffers of known pH retain (remember) those specific pH-dependent kinetic properties even when the water is removed such that no hydrogen ions are present; these ions seemingly having an effect in their absence somewhat against common sense at the simplistic level.
Possible scenarios for the memory effect in homeopathic solutions
Various possible scenarios for the retained efficacy of homeopathic solutions are presented In the Table below.
Mechanisms for 'the memory of water' as applied to homeopathy Specific clinical effects
Non-specific clinical effects
Remaining material on surfaces
Aerosol material reintroduced
Bacterial material introduced
Imprinted silicates
Remaining particle clusters Silicates, dissolved and particular
nanobubbles and their material surfaces
Redox molecules produced from water
Natural water clustering
Stabilized water clustering
Ions, including from glassware
Ethanol solution complexity
