BIOCHEMIC REMEDIES, ORGANOTHERAPY, DRAINAGE AND LOCAL TREATMENT
Does there exist a class of homoeopathic remedies which may be called biochemic? There is such a class. They are less known but they are interesting in the treatment of chronic rheumatism. We know already some biochemic remedies according to the diathesis: uric acid, phosphoric acid, oxalic acid corresponding to the three lithiases. You may used these remedies when you have analysed the blood and urine.
Besides these three remedies you must not forget Nitromuriatic acid. It is interesting in oxaluria. Urtica urens, Solidago, Thlaspi are plants and may be used as biochemic remedies. We may very often use Uva ursi as a drainage remedy.
As I have said above, the question about biochemic remedies is still less known. The question was studied by the germans in a journal published by a German pharmacy. But the solution is not up to the mark. It is also doubtful whether this question will be ever fully solved. But it is seducing to think that in homoeopathy we have some remedies for which no one can blame us because these remedies have pure laboratory data. Really speaking, Hahnemann was much more wise than most of his successors. He has indicated to us that in order to individualise a patient, it is necessary to do so by his characteristics, by his suggestive symptoms and that is often what we find by the examination of kidneys or analysis of blood. These are the points of arrival and not the points of departure; points of arrival in relation to extremely different states. We find cholesterinaemia or uremia in all sorts of different states. Persons having different temperaments arrive at the same point.
Let us now speak about organotherapy. Let our friend Barishac give us some indications on this point.
Dr. Barishac Classically, the thyroid is regularly used not in the habitual doses which are often ponderable but in the infinitesimal doses (200 or 1000). Parathyroid and pituitary are often used in deforming rheumatism. for other types of rheumatism they are not so useful.
Dr.Fortier-Bernoville – I must speak at first about general drainage before passing to functional remedies. Besides homoeopathic drainage which is done on the different spheres, you may also drain the high dilutions. According to the ideas of Dr. Nebel, the drainage done on all possible spheres, the decoctions (Sarsaparilla, Uva ursi and still others) may give excellent results. You must remember that many patients were treated and cured thus by Pierre Benoit.
The drainage is then an important question in the treatment of chronic rheumatism. The chronic rheumatism is one of those questions in which homoeopathy hesitates. does not give much result or acts very slowly. In the latter case the drainage and canalisation are extremely important.
Finally we must not forget that the local treatment in chronic rheumatism is also necessary. The local treatment is rational when you have the troubles of the local tropism such that there exists an antagonism between the local interest of the subject and the general interest of the organism in cause. You may advise local bath to the patient, to apply pomades prepared with the indicated homoeopathic remedies (Rhus tox for example): some baths with tincture of Thuja, Bryonia or pine oil, remedies that are more or less empirical, but they act well very often. The same remedies may be used externally.
Bernoville was a major lecturer in homeopathy, and he was active in Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis, and a founder of the le Syndicat national des médecins homœopathes français in 1932, and a member of the French Society of Homeopathy, and the Society of Homeopathy in the Rhone.
Fortier-Bernoville wrote several books, including Une etude sur Phosphorus (1930), L'Homoeopathie en Medecine Infantile (1931), his best known Comment guerir par l'Homoeopathie (1929, 1937), and an interesting work on iridology, Introduction a l'etude de l'Iridologie (1932).
With Louis-Alcime Rousseau, he wrote several booklets, including Diseases of Respiratory and Digestive Systems of Children, Diabetes Mellitus, Chronic Rheumatism, treatment of hay fever (1929), The importance of chemistry and toxicology in the indications of Phosphorus (1931), and Homeopathic Medicine for Children (1931). He also wrote several short pamphlets, including What We Must Not Do in Homoeopathy, which discusses the logistics of drainage and how to avoid aggravations.
He was an opponent of Kentian homeopathy and a proponent of drainage and artificial phylectenular autotherapy as well.