If what you had was effective, it wasn’t homeopathic. Homeopathy requires very large amounts of dilution, to the point there aren’t even two molecules of the active ingredient present in a dose.

Not quite. Homeopathy is a medical belief structure consisting of certain practices that attempt to cure "like with like". It has shown no benefits over placebos or other medical treatments, and on certain occasions, has been shown to have serious consequences.

There are many parts to homeopathy that are widely criticized, such as "potentisation", a process of diluting a substance to such a degree that there contains little or none of the beginning ingredient. Additionally, since the goal is to treat symptoms by using like symptoms, the causes are never truly addressed, especially since the underlying philosophy of homeopathy is that the body can cure itself.

Thus, if you were helped by a homeopathic medicine, it was more than statistically likely a placebo effect. Please do not rely on homeopathy for medicine.

because they have real stuff in them that does work

No. Don't confuse homeopathy with herbal remedies. Homeopathic preparations are diluted, must be diluted to be homeopathic, to a degree where you don't have an atom left of "active" ingredient in the mix, insert some gross unscientific explanation about the "memory of water". That then is either taken directly, or sprinkled on sugar.

The effects of homeopathic preparations, any of them, is not distinguishable from placebo. If you look at them under a spectrograph they are exactly placebo: Water or sugar.

Herbal remedies, though? It's a hit and miss, some have been tested to not have an effect or not really the assumed one, a metric fuckton do have effects exactly as traditional use tells us (random examples: Valerian for nervous excitation, elderberry for colds), others very much do have effects but are not used because they're too dangerous (e.g. fern against tapeworms: Fern contains a neurotoxin and getting the dose wrong is easy, and easily fatal, nowadays we have synthetic stuff that's toxic to tapeworms but harmless for humans).

There's one single thing that's proven to be clinically effective about homeopathic treatment (compared to standard practice): The way doctors talk to patients, not just hearing reports about a particular symptom and then digging down into that, but taking stock of pretty much their whole life situation, it's a very broad interview. Because, yes, many people are indeed better helped by someone being visibly interested in their well-being than swallowing clinically active pharmaceuticals against their stomach bug which is actually a symptom of stress or such.

There'd be nothing whatsoever wrong with introducing that in standard care, it'll probably even save tons of money in the long run, as well as prescribing placebo -- the patient knowing that it's placebo doesn't mean that placebo effects don't get triggered, there's still a very good chance of an effect happening, the bodymind is funny like that. If in doubt, flank with hypnotherapy you'll have a regime that's not just more effective at triggering placebo effects than homeopathy, but is also ethical.

God, all these people ignoring "labeled as homeopathic"...

Because yeah, there are "homeopathic" remedies on the market that actually contain significant quantities of their ingredients, they're just using the word for marketing. Most of them do nothing, or are just a slightly higher dose of what you'd get from sleepytime tea. A very well-known muscle relaxant in that niche says it contains something like the equivalent of half an ounce each of valerian root, lemon balm, etc once you break down the obfuscation.

Homeopathy is total bunk, but it seems like there is no shortage of companies happy to defraud the believers, going so far as to actually give them what they think they're buying.

Isn't the rule that if it's really homeopathic then it won't do anything and if it really does it's a medicine?

Not quite. I don't know anything about the labeling on the particular product you used, but homeopathy is a magical process and not a chemical one. It relies on the theories that "like cures like" and that "water has a memory". A homeopathic remedy for a cold might use black pepper since it makes you sneeze, and then a tiny bit is added to water, and then that water is shaken to make it magical and diluted 50%. The shaking and diluting is allegedly performed tens or hundreds of times, because in homeopathy the LESS "active" ingredient there is, the stronger it is.

You're correct that an herbal or other traditional remedy becomes medicine once it's proven. However homeopathy has been conclusively disproven, and in fact never proven to work better than placebo (because that's all it is - there's intentionally nothing actually in it)