CONCLUSION.
How are cancer cases to be treated at the present time? Let us briefly indicate how a modern homoeopath can and ought to treat a cancer patient each time medical treatment is necessary or only possible.
1. The Precancerous State: One ought systematically to search for the existence of a tendency to cancer in every subject over forty years. Were there any cancer cases in the parents or family? This is very important as this has been demonstrated in the systematic examination we never fail to make.
Was there syphilis or gonorrhoea, or repeated vaccinations or even a former psoric, tuberculinique or tuberculous state? All these morbid manifestations appear often in different degrees; the first two especially predispose to malignancy. Do there exist certain signs of the precancerous state such as yellow spots on the skin, naevi (signs of Thuja), or again, a disturbed mental state through the morbid fear of cancer? Truthfully, these symptoms have but a reduced value because of their frequency, or better still, we must consider all patients today as being precancerous if they are matured. Cancer is at most a precipice which all ought compulsorily to scale at a certain time in life and into which the unfortunate rarely fall… In spite of all affirmations, unfortunately, cancer can very well appear even in subjects seriously or regularly followed. What is more important is to appreciate the general vitality of the subject.
We must fear cancer following a period of marked weakness, general or localized atony in the susceptible area which can present the feared tumor, hepatic insufficiency with induration and swelling of the liver, changes in the attitude and appearance of the patient who stoops whose complexion becomes wan, the facial lines drawn.
One may fear an abdominal cancer coming with excessive and stubborn distension of the abdomen, with loss of elasticity and resistance of the tissues to palpitation and modifications of the percussion note. But all this constitutes more a vague picture which leads the mind intuitively towards the hypothesis of the menace of cancer rather than by a logical and sure reasoning. That is why, in our opinion, one of the best signs is simply the wasting. Let us fear the progressive and inexplicable loss of weight in every subject between the ages of forty and fifty, and older. That indicates a general intoxication, prelude of a palpable and visible tumor. What we call the precancerous state includes, in large part besides, the still microscopic existence of the tumor in the form of some few degenerated cells.
It would be useful to have in this case a laboratory criterion. It is here that the Douris and Mondain blood drop test can be very useful.
Treatment should consist in the prescription of the constitutional remedy and in the most serious general drainage of the subjects. Results will be excellent most often. It will be impossible, and with truth, to affirm that one has been able to avoid in a patient an always hypothetical cancer; but the general impression is in favor of a favorable prophylactic action of the scourge.
2. Cancer: Without hoping for too much but with an absolute tenacity let us treat the established cancer cases. If we can almost never cure it, at least let us able to hope in obtaining quite often a certain equilibrium, which is more or less stable, between the patient and his disease. This means a survival some times of five, six, ten years or more
One of our friends succeeded in saving thus a servant in his employ for twelve years. She had a generalized and incurable breast cancer surrounded by multiple glandular chains. Such cases are not rare. Personally, we have obtained it in ten malignant breast tumors, in two cases of cutaneous neoplasm, in three cases of gastric epitheliomata. Half of these patients still live, some treated by us for six or seven years. The tumor always exist, more or less diminished or a large, but the patients are living and that is essential. We do not know if that will last for a long time yet, but such results, though inconstant and even rare in comparison to the total of treated cases are all the same encouraging.
The weight curve, in our opinion, m as in tuberculosis, is paramount to correct and consult. The patient should be weighed each week. This curve will govern the repetition of the constitutional remedies or the nosodes. Like wise, the Douris and Mondain blood drop test should be regularly performed. The weight curve will very quickly tell us the results and hopes which one can expect from the given treatment.
We should look after the morale of our patients. We should absolutely avoid letting them know their disease; we should shelter them from moral and emotional shocks.
Plenty of food, healthful, rich in vitamins, poor in spiced and nitrogenous elements should be given. Well prepared dishes will stimulate the appetite essential to the gain in weight.
Cautiously, without too much repetition, the constitutional remedies and nosodes should be prescribed (the 200th every ten to twenty days; the IM. every fifteen to forty days, on the average) as the specified remedies according to the methods of Nebel, Rubens-Duval, etc.
At the same time one should give to the subject the strictly indicated homoeopathic remedies and a judicious drainage should be instituted, glandular, humoral, cellular and tissue. The patient should be remineralized.
One should not forget the local state at the expense of the body. Each time it is possible, applications of compresses soaked in mother tinctures of well chosen plants should be employed.
The patient should be followed with great care in order to gather in the slightest signs of change in the condition. Acting thus, we should save the great part of these cases certain suffering and their death should be easier. In certain cases survival should be prolonged and in other cases, rare to be truthful, we shall obtain perhaps-who knows?-the joy of an unforeseen cure.
To attend without sectarianism and only to cure; to be always remedy to use every method with distinctly superior results, old or new, seductive or formidable foreign or natural; accord to general principles, to abstract or philosophical ideas on the value of a beacon of orientation, the last word, above all, to be decided by accomplishments. Flee the charm of the dreams of false occultism, trust only the faithful and monotonous common sense. such shall be our guides in treating our patients, in cancer and other affections, with conscientiousness, patience and tenacity.
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.