From the hepatic point of view, it has some relation to Magnesia muriatica and sometimes to Hydrastis. From urinary point of view with : Coccus cacti, Terebinthina, when the urines are red, rare and there is dysuria.
To check the aggr. of Berberis on the skin you may give the drainage remedy of A. Neble : Fumaria and Saponaria, 10 gtts of 1x which act remarkably canalising Berberis avoiding eczema and the itchings.
China naturally is an important medicine of hepatic insufficiency which I cannot describe in detail for want of space. You will find all its indications in the Materia Medica. You know that this is the first remedy experimented by Hahnemann. Really speaking it is not a ground remedy because it does not act very well in very high dilutions and as a remedy of temperaments, but it is indicated in all sorts of troubles and it acts electively on the liver and the blood, on all losses of organic fluids and haemorrhages. It is an important remedy of Centripetal Action and in this it opposes our important Centrifugal Sulphur. It is for this reason it should be given with great precaution because it may aggravate my blockage. However, as we have said, it plays an important part in the drainage or to be exact it helps us to make derivations.
China is very often, hypercholesterinemic and hydrogenoid. I have already spoken of these China types of cholesterinemics who are swollen with water and who really are dehydrated because the water that they have in their tissues cannot be used by them. They are used by the cholesterin which is very avid of water. The water behaves in human organism like a foreign body which does not serve to the exchanges and rather does not have any service in the intracellular life. What is characteristic of life and which shows well the action of the important homoeopathic remedies, such as Natrum Muriaticum and China, is this balancing, of these exchanges that are done between the intracellular spaces and intercellular spaces. The young subject, full of life, has some hydrophile cells; the subject who advances in age, gradually as he is more and more used up has more and more hydrophobic cells and the retention of water; in persons of advanced age who become hydrogenoid or carbo-nitrogenoid in the intercellular space; the dehydration, the demineralisation and the loss of life are caused in the cells themselves.
Whereas in subjects who are still young and who have a powerful life, the cells are hydrophobic, swollen with water; it is for this reason, the children have thirst very often because they have the need to ingest water necessary for their intracellular exchanges.
China is an important regulator of intercellular spaces with Natrum sulphuricum, while Natrum muriaticum in high dilutions is a regulator of intracellular spaces. Natrum Muriaticum acts on the intercellular spaces when it is given in lower dilutions in triturations.
COLOCYNTHIS, DIOSCOREA VILLOSA, BRYONIA BELLADONNA, CHAMOMILLA.
These are the five remedies of painful spasms of the biliary ducts. They act also electively on the cross road (right) of the colon (spasms, adherences, pericholecystitis, pericolitis)
All the five are important remedies of hepatic colic.
In order to act soon these remedies should not be used internally alone (6 preferably) but also externally, local use of a compress of hot humid flannel on which should be sprinkled 5 to 10 drops of one or many of these drugs in alcoholatures (M.T.)
Dioscorea villosa and Colocynthis, both are important remedies, oppose one another.
Dioscorea villosa. The pain obliges the patient to stretch and even to bend backwards. Irradiation of the pain from the gall bladder to the back, to arms, to heart and specially to the right breast.
The pain appears suddenly. It is localised, on some very definite points and which may be covered by the finger tip.
Rumblings. Emission of gas. Flatulence (specially in tea drinkers). Better by walking. Heart beat is weak. Protruding hemorrhoids.
General aggravation in the evening, at night, while lying down, by bending forward. Amel. by stretching, and by pressure.
It is indicated in hepatic colic more than Colocynthis.
Colocynthis. Pain better by bending double and Hepatic pressing strongly the belly. Colic after anger. Pain often localised in the umbilical region.
Colocynthis acts more on calculus lying more below than Dioscoria. Cramping pain, cramps are more marked in Colocynthis, Amel. by heat.
Bryonia. It is hardly indicated in the books. It has never given me good results. It suits to hepatic colic, which makes the patient immobile while nephritis requires movement.
Bryonia is complementary to Dioscorea, is amel, by pressure, having a very localised pain. But that pain is pricking and ameliorated by rest, whereas Dioscorea may often aggr. by rest and by lying down. These two remedies may be alternated. They help each other and do not antidote. In Bryonia : thirst for cold water. Liver is often big and congested; Amelioration of pain by Lying down on the painful side Nausea and vomiting. Aggr. by movement, while sitting up or by standing up on the bed. The stomach is sensitive to touch. Pressure in the stomach as if by a stone. Frequent fever.
Belladonna, is related to Colocynth. It is very spasmodic, aggr. of pain by the least jerk, by the least touch. Extreme sensitiveness to touch. Face red, dilated pupils. Frequent fever. Sweats.
Chamomilla. Hepatic pain after anger with great irritability, capriciousness, never satisfied. Aggr. at night, and by the heat. Flatulence, distension of the abdomen. Fever with one cheek red the other pale and cold.
Podophyllum, Aloe, Aesculus hippocastanum and Collinsonia.
These are the four remedies of portal hypertension and of hemorrhoids or rectal troubles having relation to hepatic manifestations.
Podophyllum. It enters into all possible laxatives of the official medicine. It is considered to have an important action on the intestines.
Here is as we understand its effects in homoeopathy. Before all it has a local elective action on the rectum and secondarily action on the duodenum and thirdly a less important action on the small intestines.
Podophyllum therefore acts as you see on the two extremities of the intestines; duodenum and rectum and its action on the duodenum is divided into two by an action on the biliary duct and the liver. It creates a motion for stools because it forces the gall bladder to empty itself. When the bile enters into the intestines it accelerates the intestinal transit. The reflex action of the bile causes strong contractions of the intestines. One is tempted to believe that it has no action on the stomach and consequently it cannot acts on the first portion of the duodenum. But podophyllum acts well on the duodenum, more particularly on the second and third portion of the duodenum, specially on the second and the third portion of Vater’s ampula to the anastomosis of the Choledochous canal. We have said that the action on the rectum is the most important. But Podophyllum may have a secondary action on the right ovary, on the right scapula and on the right side of the pharynx. You see then it has a rightsidedness. All the regions of its action are on the right of the axis of the human body.
Modalities. Aggravation in the morning towards 5 a.m. (diarrhoea forcing the individual out of the bed); while eating, during dentition, by drinking by movement and by mercurial treatment.
Amelioration : Lying on the belly.
The diarrhoea of Podophyllum is accompanied by gurglings, profuse stools, putrid, without pain, very abundant, noisy and of clear yellow colour.
The colour of the stools should be kept in mind. Really the stools are colourless because of the absence of bile. Acholia. They are noisy because of gas, putrid and very foetid because of the want of bile to disinfect the fecal matter. Finally the stools are painless (Phosphoric a.c. Kali bich.). You know that it suits to infantile cholera. The prolapsus of the rectum, during dentition and in summer. Kent insists much on Podophyllum in his Materia Medica because it is the remedy that converted him to homoeopathy; he had a patient whose diarrhoea was extremely foetid, putrid, and have obnoxious smell and he obtained a very good result by Podophyllum.
The diarrhoea of Arsenic is also very foetid but blackish. Arsenicum is a good remedy of food poisoning, ptomaine poisoning and poisoning by all other foods which are not fresh; the putridity is even cadaveric.
Relation of Podophyllum. A group of medicines of drainage of the digestive apparatus are complementaries and are of the first importance with a ground remedy Sulphur. The group is : Nux vomica, Argentum nitricum, Anacardium. Aloe, Aesculus hippocastanum, Podophyllum, Magnesia sulphurica and all the Mercuries are related to Sulphur.
Mercurius dulcis, Mercurius solubilis and Mercurius corrosivus act on the whole digestive system, specially on the mouth on the duodenum, liver, pancreas, intestines and Mercurius corrosivus on the rectum.
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.