Oscillococcinum

So I took some of my mom's Oscillococcinum this morning to see if it might help calm down my coughing fits (I think I might have fractured a rib). It occurred to me after taking it that, to my memory, all round-white-pill homeopathics I have taken in my life have had the same sweet taste, so I looked at the ingredients. They were in Latin, for some reason:

"Anas barbariae hepatis et cordis extractum 200CK"

With Google Translate, that became:

"Barbary duck liver and heart extract 200CK"

So I had the question at that point... Why would duck liver/heart be the color white, and why the hell would it taste sweet? And what is this 200CK?

Well after a bit of research I found some answers. First of all, 200CK is apparently an indication of dilution. The C stands for Centesimal (a division into hundredths), and the K stands for Korsakov. Not Korsakoff syndrome, but rather the Korsakov method of making homeopathic remedies (Yes, his full name is Semen Nikolaevich Korsakov... Poor guy). Basically, his method was to use the same container for mixing the diluted extracts with water.

So now we know that this Oscillococcinum contains 200 of some division of barbary duck liver and heart extract mixed with water using the same tank for each mixture. I feel like if they just said it like this in plain English it would feel a lot less shady. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Feeling as though I had more yet to discover, I researched Oscillococcinum itself, and found an interesting fact... Not only are the ingredients on the bottle printed in Latin, seemingly on purpose to prevent their knowledge, but not all of the ingredients are even printed on the bottles. Oscillococcinum contains 1x10-400 (ten to the -400th power) grams Anas Barbariae Hepatis et Cordis Extractum as the "Active Ingredient," and the "Inactive Ingredients" are 0.85 grams sucrose and 0.15 grams lactose. So... Yeah, that explains why this duck liver/heart would taste sweet. I wonder if the sugar is organic?

So basically Oscillococcinum pills are made of 100% sugar with maybe a single molecule of what might be a 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance of being duck liver and heart extract instead of water. And no, I did not make that number up. That is 10 to the -400th power - the amount of the active ingredient in this product.

When Professor Hubert Farnsworth from Futurama replied to Amy Wong's suggestion of homeopathic medicine with the retort: "Or a big fat placebo! It's all the same crap!" I gave it a laugh and gave the medicine the benefit of the doubt... But finally looking at the science behind much of this stuff, I'm afraid I don't see any possible conclusion other than, yes, these are sugar pills... I certainly welcome somebody to prove me wrong, but I'm going to need some good explanations about how a duck's liver and heart could heal my ailments in the first place. Apart from curing my hunger, of course.