DRAINAGE AND CANALIZATION REMEDIES.
In cancer, as in tuberculosis, it is essential to act in a centripetal sense in order to retain the mineral salts and prevent malnutrition (constant struggle against wasting). We must also neutralize or eliminate in a centrifugal sense, the toxins elaborated in the body. That is why, in accordance with A. Nebel, we drain our patients.
Drainage ought to be directed, if possible, via the local selective action of certain well individualized remedies. A Nebel has praised a profitable remedial association used in drainage; Chelidonium, Hydrastis, Crataegus, China, Scrofularia nodosa, all in tincture, whose action compels us to retain it also in the precancerous states. We have also noted the value of certain remedies which appear to act well according to the hypothesis of drainage: Sedum acre, Phytolacca, the first for the general condition and the tumor, the second appearing to produce its effects in the tumor class.
First Cooper, then LeHunte Cooper, showed the value of the action of homoeopathic remedies administered in material doses, one or two drops of a well prepared tincture which have a selective action on certain regions or viscera.
That is why we ought to indicate here, more especially, the local selective action of homoeopathic remedies in cancer. We have arranged the following table which is prepared for additions and modifications that are always possible.
LIPS: Condurango
TONGUE: KALI CYANATUM (inconstant action; note that saliva contains small quantities of potassium ferrocyanate): SEMPERVIVUM TECTORUM, Galium aparine.
PHARYNX: Cistus animalis, Condurango, Hydrastis, Lycopodium, Kali bichromicum.
PYLORUS and DUODENUM: ORNITHOGALUM INTESTINES: CONDURANGO, CARBO ANIMALIS, ARSENICUM ALBUM, Sedum repens, Petroleum.
CAECUM: Ornithogalum.
SIGMOID COLON and RECTUM: RUTA, SCROFULARIA NODOSA, SEMPERVIVUM TECTORUM.
ANUS: Condurango.
LIVER: CHOLESTERINUM, LYCOPODIUM, PHOSPHORUS, Choline.
PANCREAS: Phosphorus.
UTERUS: AURUM MURIATICUM NATRONATUM, KREOSOTUM, Cinnamonum, Sepia.
BREASTS: ASTERIAS RUBENS, CONIUM, CARBO ANIMALIS, HYDRASTIS, SEMPERVIVUM TECTORUM, Plumbum iodatum, Thuja.
TESTICLES: AURUM METALLICUM.
SCROTUM: Fuligo ligni
SKIN: SCROFULARIA NODOSA, CONDURANGO, GALIUM APARINE, ARSENICUM ALBUM, THUJA, CINNABARIS, Petroleum, Kali arsenicum, Radium bromide.
EYE: CONDURANGO (lids)
PERIOSTEUM: Ruta, Symphytum, Phosphorus.
LYMPHATIC GLANDS in general: Carbo animalis.
GLANDS in general: Scrofularia nodosa, Iodium, Calcarea fluorica.
FACE: THUJA, CINNABARIS.
NECK: Cistus canadensis, Mercurius (parotids).
In a general way we must note that all treatment whose object it is to ameliorate the functions of the various glands in the body, and especially the liver, shall constitute in itself a therapy of effective drainage against the danger of cancer. It can even ameliorate the state of a confirmed cancer case. That is why we must not neglect the value of organotherapy in this question, although in the tumor phase glandular extracts can hardly act favorably any more. The same does not apply to the precancerous. Let us especially note the need to achieve good hepatic function; liver drainage in its biliary and centrifugal functions as well as in its endocrinal and humoral work. Taraxacum, Chelidonium, Carduus marianus, Cholesterinum, etc., all the draining and canalizing remedies of the liver will play a very important part in the precancerous state if they are judiciously prescribed.
It is also possible that in this case the deficiency of certain mineral salts can be compensated by a therapy depending on the addition to the daily alimentary regime of this product. We must study here not only the disturbances of metabolism of magnesium, but of calcium, sodium and potassium as well.
In order to do this it is not necessary to give high doses of magnesium salts, for under the pretext of combating of a possible cancer one would too often provoke the appearance of a very bad subacute or chronic nephritis.
B. Local Treatment.
We must not neglect local treatment in cancer. In the struggle against the body and the tumor, the destruction of the latter, when this is possible, will naturally benefit the patient. Homoeopaths would be mistaken to deny it. Certain officials deceive themselves by placing their confidence only in this single extirpating or destructive therapy.
Operative intervention, judicious and so beneficial when it is precocious and not very mutilating; radiotherapy or curietherapy is a two-edged sword which must be cautiously used following long clinical experience and in very distinct cases (radium for tongue and cervix, epitheliomata of skin, etc.). Homoeopathy and its doctrine ought not to drive us to such a degree of sectarianism that we should wish to deny them. That would be an error. We ought to combat their excessive use. Each time it can be done let us choose electrocoagulation, whose practice is free from so many dangers and reverses.
But we must know well the value of certain of our remedies, especially vegetables, used locally by means of baths or compresses containing the mother tinctures. Their action is such that excluding the specific type of malignancy or the anatomopathological form of the tumor (spino or basal cell) the single act of local treatment will be able to change completely our prognosis in the different neoplasms.
From the morphological point of view let us consider cancer. It can be external or internal. External, more accessible, it is then more accessible to our compresses soaked in the mother tinctures. The cancer can be on the surface. On the surface it especially affects the mucosa or the skin; it extends in two dimensions above all. In the third dimension it ravages the glands and its increase in volume will be the cause for a more rapid and grave fatality. Our local treatment will act preferentially on the cancer which is directly accessible on the surface, the tongue, skin, breasts, stomach, cervix, rectum.
According to the cases of our personal experience, we sprinkle on a moist compress, preferably flannel of double thickness, several drops (V, X, XX) of a judiciously chosen tincture. After dressing (non-absorbent cotton and bandage) which is renewed one to three times a daily, will diminish the surface and volume of the tumor. Its consistence will be changed, the neoplasm will become softer. Sometimes it will even ulcerate in order to better eliminate a part of its excretions. The beneficial action will also be able to extend to the glands.
The tincture we most often use are: Sedum repens, Phytolacca, Scrofularia nodosa, Hydrastis (all cancers); Condurango, Ornithogalum, Conium (stomach); Conium, Bryonia (breast); Calendula (ulcerated cancers). I have not much experience with Sempervivum tectorum, Galium aparine, Symphytum, but we must not neglect them either.
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.