A remedy of pre-cancer of pre-uremic stage.
Local Elective Action. 1. On the Liver, medial lobe, biliary ducts. It is centrifugal because it acts on the central lobe of the liver.
2. On the tongue, blood, hematies.
3. Action on the sternocleidomastoids, that have contractions.
The ground remedies are Lycopodium, Phosphorus, Thuja.
Taraxacum is often a remedy of neuralgia. It acts on the knees but its action is not of any great importance as a local elective action.
Aggr. by rest, sitting or standing.
Amel. by walking and touch.
There may be an abdominal meteorism which makes it related to China. You may give to Phosphorus patient China 30 and Taraxacum 3x.
Much night-sweats, a sign of cutaneous elimination.
Taraxacum seems to bring back a digestive elimination and stops vesical elimination.
An important remedy of indigestion with vomiting of hepato- biliary origin.
Dr. A. Nebel has taught me to application of Peucedenum when in the case of an aerophagia with pyloro-duodenal syndrome, it is necessary to open the renal barrage, when the kidneys are blocked.
Hydrastis. It is really a type of medicine of universal drainage, like Solidago and Berberis. We think of it not only as a drainer of the digestive apparatus, but also of respiratory, genetary, and even urinary systems when it is the question of drainage through any mucous membranes and gland.
One of the most important characteristics is to produce a Discharge of Mucous Extremely thick, Yellowish, Ropy, Tenacious and Adherent.
Its another characteristic is debility and weakness. Hydrastis comes from Canada and we have only few ideas about its empiric use. It was first used by the homoeopaths. It is always the local elective action which makes it a remedy of drainage and canalisation. Action Hydrastis is as follows : 1. Action on the tissues which is very important. Surface action on mucous membranes. On tissues of which the value is schematised by two dimensions and not by three dimensions. Mucous of the stomach, biliary ducts, intestines. Secondarily on the uterine mucous membranes, then on the urethra; finally cavum and the pharynx more than on the bronchial mucous membranes.
2. The really elective action is produced on the Stomach, the Biliary ducts, intestines, cavum and the pharynx. The typical characteristic symptom is always thick, yellow and thready discharge.
The discharge of Hydrastis is very similar to that of Kali bichromicum which is sometimes more corrosive than that of Hydrastis.
The discharge of any mucous membrane happens in this way : 1st Stage. Less abundant, fluid, less coloured and very corrosive of the type of Arsenicum, Mercurius cor. and Nitric acid (mixed with blood)
2nd Stage. Less abundant, thicker, becomes coloured, yellowish or greenish, adherent, ropy, thready.
3rd Stage. Abundant, thick, but non-corrosive (Pulsatilla)
It seems than in the first stage there is some toxic substances because of the corrosiveness of the discharge. This gradually diminishes as the discharge continues and the mucous membrane is repaired.
Hydrastis can also be compared with an important remedy, Kreosotum, of which the flow is fluid, often mixed with blood like Arsenic or Nitric acid, excessively corrosive. The most important fact is that when you give one of these remedies, the corrosiveness of the discharge disappears very rapidly and you come to Pulsatilla. When there is no flow Sulphur is indicated or when the patient becomes a chronic one, Silicea, a remedy of fistula.
The action of Hydrastis is extremely variable according to the dilution used. We must know very well this medicine and we must have experience about its application, like Kali bichromicum and Pulsatilla, centrifugal in lower dilutions and centripetal in high and medium dilutions. It is rather from the 30th it stops the discharge. We must take care of this fact because when you give Hydrastis for a longtime in lower dilutions you may hasten the patient towards chronicity and towards fistula.
It may again be compared with Kali sulphuricum, the chronic of Pulsatilla, of which the discharge is the same, thick, mild, non-irritant.
On digestive apparatus, Hydrastis may act on two or three opposite poles. It is then a very interesting remedy of morbid metastasis, as for example.
—Biliary duct -(>)cavum-(>)pharynx.
—Biliary duct -(>)uterus
—Uterus-(>)cavum-(>)pharynx.
It is then a remedy of women who have white discharge, gonococcic or not, because of metritis. She goes to a specialist who cauterises her col uteri. Sometime after the operation she has rhino-pharyngitis or an other affection of the pharynx; still it is a remedy of persons suffering from chronic hepatic troubles, who will gradually weaken his stomach and his intestine as a consequence of bile insufficiency and will latter on have rhino-pharyngitis with thick, yellow discharge from the cavum to the behind of the nose. In the first stage it is preferable to give Hydrastis in low dilutions in order to favour the discharge and to cause a real drainage. One or two months after, when your patient is really well drained, when the discharge is no more irritating, you may give Hydrastis in high dilutions. One should never act in a centripetal sense on a corrosive discharge. On the contrary you are right to act in this way in cases of fistula or when the discharge is chronic and interminable which is the effect of the Law of least effort.
The action of Hydrastis on biliary ducts, as we have said, is externally important. It gives good results, in lower dilutions in persons who had hepatic colic, not because they had an obstruction of the bile ducts by a stone, but because that obstruction was due to stopper in the choleduct (bile duct) which causes an icterus by retention and by spasm.
Really speaking it is a secondary remedy of hepatic colic. We have other more important remedies, first of all of the pain and then of deeper action on the hepatic cell : China, Chionanthus, Chelidonium.
The works of Brule have shown that in icterus, even infectious and benign, there is always affection of the hepatic cell. In a word there always exists an acute stage. The retention is secondary, however, Hydrastis is to be considered in persons suffering from insufficient liver of ripe or of old age. It should be given after the age of fifty. It will also be prescribed in chronic dyspepsia, with diminution of gastric motility and of the secretion; persons who lose weight and who feels very much tired. They doubt the beginning of a cancer, or the cancer is already there. By treating them homoeopathically, it is seen that they put on weight, specially when Hydrastis is given. The patient seems to have arrived at cholecystitis and cancer of the stomach or of the intestines, with secondary metastasis towards the liver. Hydrastis acts specially at the time-limit.
Modalities. Aggr. by inspiration of cold air in dry weather, in open air and in a room with open windows, by slight discharge of blood.
It is a pre-cancer remedy and of suspected cancer, specially of the col uteri.
Hydrastis and Sanicula act well together in constipation.
Hydrastis acts specially on the cancer of mucosa with debility and secretion, that become very thick, or when the digestive function becomes very much defective. But it does not act so to say on the element tumour. It will act preferably at the moment of ulceration that preceeds tumour, callous ulcer which becomes cancer.
Condurango. It is used on the element tumour (stomach and pylora). It has a very important symptom : It defends by a contraction localised under the umbilical, right or left.
It is perhaps the most faithful of all the cancer remedies and it may be given in all possible dilutions. I prescribe it often in 200 followed by a 6 and by Psorinum. But for the latter one should not go beyond 30, to avoid any risk of aggravation.
In Carbo animalis the tumour is completely formed, and is very hard. There may be burning pain as if from a burning charcoal, which makes it related to Arsenicum album.
Conium is also indicated in tumours, cancers, specially glandular but it is much more inconstant than the two other.
If you give Hydrastis in very low dilutions in some cases, it may cause loss of weight while favouring the discharge. On the contrary very often you will get marvellous result by using it in M.T. or as local application.
Taraxacum, Carduus marianus and Chelidonium form the group of medicines of insufficient liver which may also act on pre- cancer stage or on persons who are in the process of developing cancer. It is for this reason they are related to Hydrastis. They are medicines of less grave stage than that of the last one.
Let us add that Hydrastis, when one has well understood it, has a double action : Centrifugal in lower dilutions and centripetal in higher dilutions; it is a remedy which will help other inconstant remedies.
Chionanthus is a small remedy of drainage by the side of Hydrastis. If you search in the Materia medica for synthesising its action, you will see that it has local elective action only on two points : The Liver and the Head. I have discovered a third point, the Pancreas and I think that pancreatic insufficiency is a rule in Chionanthus and makes it related to Iris versicolor.
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.