CLINICAL AND THERAPEUTICS STUDY OF DRAINAGE


Four principal drainers of the Liver : Solidago, Chelidonium, Taraxacum, Carduus marianus. 2. Six drainers of bile ducts and of the liver : Hydrastis Chionanthus, China, Myrica, Berberies….


CLINICAL AND THERAPEUTICS STUDY OF DRAINAGE : REMEDIES OF THE LIVER AND OF THE BILE DUCT

What conditions before all the homoeopathic remedies in their action on the drainage, is their Tropism, their Local Elective Action and the choice and selection that the human organism makes, thanks to which such a remedy will act on such tissue, such region or even on such part of such an organ (Chelidonium on the right lobe of the liver etc….)

The schema included here : Abdomen, drainage and Canalisation shows the local elective action, on the liver, the spleen and on the different parts of the digestive tract of the principal homoeopathic remedies.

Here is now a classification of remedies that we are going to study and which are the most important for the drainage of the liver and of the gall-bladder.

Vegetables :

1. Four principal drainers of the Liver : Solidago, Chelidonium, Taraxacum, Carduus marianus.

2. Six drainers of bile ducts and of the liver : Hydrastis Chionanthus, China, Myrica, Berberies.

3. Four remedies of painful spasms of the bile ducts. Colocynthis, Dioscoria villosa, Bryonia, Chamomilla.

4. Four remedies of portal hypertension and of haemorrhoids in relation to liver troubles : Podophyllum, Aloe, Aesculus hippocastanum, Collinsonia.

5. Four other remedies of hepato-biliary troubles : Ptelia Leptandra, Jugulans cinerea, Yucca filamentosa.

6. Minerals : Eight mineral compounds : Natrum phos., Natrum sulphuricum, Magnesia muriatica, Magnesia sulphuricum, Kali bichromicum, Kali carbonicum, Mercurius solubilis and Mercurius dulcis.

And finally :

7. Two remedies which are to be placed separately for their particular action on cholecystitis, one vegetable and the other from the animal kingdom : Ricinus communis and Vipera.

Biochemic remedies.

Some organic substances such as Liver extract, Bile extract, Biliary salts, Calculus biliaris, Cholesterinum, Lecithin, Lutein, and the choleretics and cholagogs described by Charbol, Polypode, Cynara scolymus, Combratum, Boldo, and Rosemary etc.

Finally there exist numerous remedies of Derivation which act not only on the liver but also on the other organs.

Iris versicolor (Pancreas and intracephalic circulation).

Digitalis (heart and kidneys).

Dulcamara (locomotor system and conjunctive tissues)

Nux vomica. Canaliser of Sulphur on the small intestines (Nebel)

Antimonium crudum. Action on the intestines.

Arsenicum album. Universal action. Every age, all the tissues of all organs.

Ceonathus. Principal sphere of action on the spleen.

Sepia. Portal veins and lower abdomen.

Pulsatilla. General venous congestion and troubles due to incomplete digestion of facts.

Cyclamen. For the digestion of fact.

Solidago, Chelidonium, Taraxacum, Carduus Marianus.

Solidago. An important remedy of drainage, indicated tous by Burnett, and we of the French school use it specially; foreign homoeopaths, use it much less. Even we use it as a routine, prescribing it whenever our therapeutic ideas are somewhat vague.

Solidago, though very interesting to use and is of the first importance among the remedies for the drainage of the outlets, is not however the only one and should not occupy an exaggerated place. It is a plant, which grows in the forest and dry grounds. It is not consumed as food, but however one can ingest it in a small quantity without any danger and the cattles often eat them. It blooms in August and in September.

Empirically it is used as a diuretic and you will find in the book on phytotherapy of Leclerc, a small chapter on it, which is interesting to read, but this does not teach us, Homoeopaths, anything, because the Phytotherapaths know much less than us about the plant. Leclerc has however indicated to us that a decoction of Solidago, may give good results in enteralgia, diarrhoea, dysenteric stools with tenesmus and in infantile enteritis during dentition.

It is a remedy that acts by opening the Renal Barrage and secondarily the digestive barrage. It has a very mild action on the liver and also on the lower limbs and on the blood.

The reputation of Solidago comes from the fact that it checks the medicinal aggravation caused by Sulphur, Nux vomica, Lycopodium. It may be related to all the important ground remedies and even to all the medicines of the Materia Medica. It has no incompatibility. Every time you use it for opening the renal barrage and at the sametime you prescribe other remedies, ground remedies and functional remedies, you need not be afraid of incompatibility you may be sure that it will not hinder the action of other remedies. But you must know how to apply it. If you use it in very low dilution, 1x or 3x, you risk an irritation of kidney. If you use it in very high dilution, you will not open the renal barrage. On my part, after number of trials, I have settled on 3x, 5 drops every day before meal at noon. The decoction acts very mildly as diuretic and does not cause dysuria. You may give safely to some persons, a cup of the decoction in the morning. By doing so you will have a very mild action on the kidney and on the liver.

Some homoeopaths with Chiron, have the habit of not giving a high dilution but begins to prescribe at first some remedies of drainage for eight days before giving the high dilution.

Sometimes Solidago will allow you to have a digestive elimination, i.e. it will act mildly on the constipation. But this is not always the case. Sometimes Solidago does not at all act on constipation when on the contrary the urine increases generally. The color of the urine may change. After the prescription of Solidago the deposit in the morning may be abundant.

But this remedy may not be always enough for drainage of digestive apparatus and kidney and you are sometimes obliged to give a functional remedy which will act as a link between the ground remedies and the drainage remedies. This is specially true for Lycopodium. You know that this constitutional or ground remedy causes often some aggravations specially in adults.

In children you may prescribe it without any fear of danger. To an adult it is very often “shocking”. The aggravation is rarely dangerous but sometimes annoying; it is either hypersthenic, or hyposthenic; it may cause spasms like that of Colocynthis or an abdominal distension like that of China. If your Lycopodium subject defends violently, if he is nervous having many mental symptoms of the remedy, an angry person, he may very well, after having the dose of Lycopodium, have on the next day some very violent spasmodic pains in the abdomen, specially with a spasm of transverse colon, and of small intestines; the pain is so violent that the patient is obliged to bend double. In this case, you will give two hours, at the same time as complementary and antidote of Lycopodium, as complementary it follows Lycopodium, as antidote it checks its bad effects.

In order to save your patient from aggravation, you may give one dose of Lycopodium 200 followed by Colocynthis 30, one granule every day. You can prescribe it preferably at 4 to 5 p.m., i.e. to say towards the time of the aggravation of Lycopodium.

Other patients may have distension of the abdomen from the next day, a real general acrocholia, tiresome and painful, generalised meteorism in the whole abdomen. There is a kind of very intense blockage. China, then antidotes the bad effects of Lycopodium and is also a complementary to it.

And if you are afraid that your patient may have both types of aggravation you are quite right to follow your high dilution by Colocynthis 30 and China 30 alternately. Solidago will drain Lycopodium and will be prescribed everyday at noon. This is a very simple formula of drainage in Homoeopathy.

We must recall here that what is remarkable in homoeopathic medicine is that even the homoeopaths who have long experience, do not know how a patient is going to react the first time when it has been prescribed to him.

You may take the entire responsibility of cure in future, but you can never say to a patient who comes to you for the first time : “This first treatment is going to cure you or cause amelioration”. You know nothing. It is impossible to know how a patient will react. One knows it only during the second consultation. There is always an unknown one, only temporarily. This unknown one shows us the necessity of individualising each case and not to give ever a patient a prescription of confection instead of giving him the measured remedy.

There is no doubt that Solidago has the benefit of that reputation to check medicinal aggravation but we must not exaggerate its use and should not use it as a routine. As we have said just now, it opens the renal barrage. The patient micturates better, the eliminations are sometimes more concentrated but very often abundant. Sometimes however after Solidago, the quantity of urine does not increase, but the patient goes well. In the symptoms indicated by Dr. Renard, I believe, it should be insisted when you wish to give Solidago on the symptom of “feeling weak”. The patient, from sometime, feels that he is becoming weak, he is losing his energy in work and his kidneys are sensitive to pressure.

Mauritius Fortier-Bernoville
Mauritius (Maurice) Fortier Bernoville 1896 – 1939 MD was a French orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy to become the Chief editor of L’Homeopathie Moderne (founded in 1932; ceased publication in 1940), one of the founders of the Laboratoire Homeopathiques Modernes, and the founder of the Institut National Homeopathique Francais.

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.