A. The Basic Remedies: These are the great antipsorics of Hahnemann of which the list is somewhat revised but on the whole it is exact.
You will be astonished of the following fact: If you consider these remedies you will find that more than half a dozen of these remedies should never be used in children.
Graphites for example is very rarely a remedy of a child. It will begin to be indicated in the 2nd infancy. It is not absolutely a constitutional remedy.
Causticum will be indicated only in the 2nd infancy, in children who have partial paralysis, strabism, or other troubles like retention of urine, incontinence of urine or some manifestations having a peculiar mental symptom: the fear of darkness. But it is not generally indicated in an infant.
Similarly a child may become a Thuya child after vaccination but some time must elaps before the picture, which the British homoeopath Dr. Burnett has so clearly described to us. It is only after vaccination during the second infancy the child may have warts, brittle nails and other symptoms of Thuya.
Lachesis, Ignatia, Nux vomica, all these remedies of endocrinal imbalance are also to be considered later on. A girl who in her first infancy will require Chamomilla or Belladonna will be come a patient of Ignatia only at puberty. Dr. Nebel sometimes uses Lachesis in children before puberty when they are related to Sulphur.
Natrum sulphuricum, a remedy of hydrogenoids in particular will be indicated only in the second infancy, in asthmatic children who have the attacks during the second infancy. Asthma of a child is generally amenable to Phosphorus and Natrum muriaticum.
Many other ground remedies which are suitable to the adolescents, adults or to the second infancy are not indicated in infants.
The remedies of infants are very simple and less numerous.
First of all the three Calcareas: Calcarea carbonica, Calcarea phosphorica and Calcarea fluorica.
We have said just now that the so fecund and so useful description of Dr. A. Nebel from the clinical point of view of the osteo–articular constitutions should be supported by an experimental basis by quantitative and comparative researches of Calcium Carbonate, Calcium Phosphate and Fluoride of Calcium in the skeleton of numerous individuals of all ages. We know already that in the bones, there is 2/3 of Calcium phosphate for 20/100 of Calcium carbonate and a very small quantity of Fluoride of calcium. This fact shows that while the Carbonica are more numerous, the qualitative question is more important than the quantitative in the bone tissues that always contain these three Calcium salts.
Inspite of the above fact, it is necessary to make quantitative researches and to have physiological criteria. This is not yet done.
It is also necessary, on the basis of the antagonism of Silicate and of Calcium, specially Calcarea carbonica, to find out what is the quantity of Silicate contained in the periarticular tissues because it is said that in the Fluro-calcis, there is a great laxity of the articulations in relation to that laxity if for examples there is greater trouble of Silicate metabolism in Fluorocalcics.
Whatever it may be, we may call the age of the infants with Dr. Thooris, the age of Calcium and if the child is before all a digestive, we must try to understand how much the question of mineralisation and bones are physiologically related to the digestive system.
We see then that from the therapeutical point of view the three Calcareas are of the first importance in children. After the Calciums comes Silicea and later on Sulphur and Arsenic.
We therefore find at the basis of Homoeopathic treatment of children, acting as the best of the remedies among the habitual important remedies of morbid temperaments, the minerals that form the human organism and Arsenic, which though not a mineral, is at the basis of the constitutions. With them we may add Phosphorus but from another point of view it is only of secondary importance.
Really speaking Phosphorus has very good action in children of all ages but it is a dangerous remedy because in actual life, most of the children whom we treat are oxygenoid tubercular. They may soon suffer from ganglionary or respiratory lesions and in such cases Phosphorus should be used with great care up to the age of 18 to 20. However, there is one exception, in the case of infantile asthma which “responds” to Phosphorus 30.
Let us then leave aside Phosphorus in case of digestive troubles of children. Let us study at first the five remedies that we have already mentioned. Then we will study Lycopodium, Sepia, Thuya and other remedies that are less important: Natrum muriaticum & Iodium though they are secondary to those which we have placed on the top of our schema.
Let us first of all study comparatively the three Calcarea: Calcarea carbonica, Calcarea phosphorica and Calcarea fluorica of which the first two are more important from the clinical point of view.
Calcarea carbonica. It corresponds to all digestive and nutritional troubles of the infants at the beginning of the second infancy. The child suffers from troubles caused by milk which it does not digest. At the end of the 2nd infancy there may be rachitism or some manifestations of nutrition. Nutritional troubles are of the first importance in this remedy. If from the very birth, the child has a big head, protruded frontal eminence you will immediately think of a heredo- syphilitic child. Calcarea carbonica is a very important remedy of some heredo-syphilitic children. It acts also on Fluorocalcics of A. Nebel and Calcarea carbonica which is considered as a constitutional remedy of Carbocalcics should not be confounded here. The child cannot digest well the milk and may vomit it in curdled form; it may have acidity, sour stool. It does not like fat ands milk with too much fat is not digested by it. Calcarea carbonica perfectly suits these children.
Later on in the second infancy Calcarea carbonica will evolve towards rachitism and avitaminosis. We will have then the typical child of Calcarea carbonica: big, fat, soft, chilly, slow, indolent, always aggravated by cold, who walks late. If it is forced to walk earlier it will become bow-legged and it may have all the troubles or rickets. Thorax becomes shallow, big belly open fontanelles, perspiration on the head. It suffers from obesity. It becomes a prize baby.
One important characteristic of the child is that it desires indigestible food, chalk, charcoal etc. It seems that it desires indigestible food, chalk, charcoal etc. It seems that the child receives from the nature the indication about his troubles of Calcium metabolism, and it tries to fight against its rachitism by products which are not food. Thus it may have great desire for eggs, salt, sugar, and certain condiments. He may not have appetite.
Silicea. In opposition to Calcarea carbonica it is rather a lean child, small with a big head and a big belly. It has also sweat of the head; difficult closing of the fontanelles with early lymphatic ganglions. The ganglions of Calcarea carbonica are soft but the ganglions of Silicea are hard and small and mobile, rolling under fingers or they may suppurate. The child of Silicea may have extraganglionary boils, fistulas, cutaneous boils, respiratory boils and chronic otitis etc.
Silicea has also sour eructations like Calcarea carbonica. The child may have diarrhoea but more often constipation. It has troubles after vaccination. Very often the child who will be suitable to Thuya and will have warts towards the age of 10, will require at first Silicea.
Silicea is a remedy of the troubles of growths and athrepsia. Calcarea carbonica suits rather to rickets. Silicea may grow to become lean; Calcarea carbonica will grow towards obesity.
Calcarea phosphorica has a retracted boat like chest, the opposite of Calcarea carbonica. Calcarea phosphorica child will suffer often from colic with every trial with new food. It has diarrhoea from fruits, from fruit juices. Calcarea phosphorica is tubercular and chronic tubercular which cause in it a desire for exciting foods, either alcohol or meat. Calcarea phosphorica has rather the desire for pork, and salted meat. It is a remedy of Phosphocalcic child either pure or mixed with marked hereditary tubercular condition.
In Calcarea phosphorica, like Calcarea carbonica and Silicea the fontanelles close late and the child evolves towards anemia of the muscles. Its tissues are soft. Really speaking Calcarea phosphorica is not a remedy of rickets.
Calcarea fluorica. In Calcarea fluorica there exists a great laxity of articulations. The articulations are very lax but the glands are very hard, as hard as stones. The bad elastic tissues are seen on the surface of the veins. The child will have varicose veins in adult age. The rachitism of Calcarea fluorica is related to Syphilitic heredity (with deformations of bones like curvature of the femur, of the tibia etc.). Heredo-syphilis is marked specially on the sense organs. The child will have in the very early age, suppurations of the eye lids, blepharitis, otitis etc.
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.