Homeopathic Remedies for Cancer


The great difficult in advanced cases of cancer is the inability to obtain therapeutic individualization of symptoms. They have the pathology and all the common symptoms that go with it, but they are not sufficient to make a good homoeopathic prescription….


SOME CANCER REMEDIES AND THEIR INDICATIONS by A.H. GRIMMER, M.D.

The more I study cancer, the more I prescribe for cancer, the more I am convinced that the earlier we start prescribing for cancer the more better our results will be. sometimes it is astonishing the result we get in very late cases, but these are exceptions far from the rule. We relieve their pain and suffering an improve their general health and increase their days; there is no question about that. A for curing, it is very rare in advanced cases.

In the early cases, were there is just the state of incipiency, where you have already the beginning cachexia and pain, and in some cases quite a little pathology beginning to show-small nodules of the breast and characteristic glandular involvement-you will be astounded what careful prescribing will do in most of these cases.

Cancer is a condition, the outgrowth of very low states-to use the language of Dr. Kent-and undoubtedly made up of all the miasms plus drug, serum and other irritation. I am convinced that all those factors enter into the admitted increase of cancer. Treatment by the “old school” is just as it was twenty years ago, in spite of the fact that their losses are appalling. They have made some apparently exceptional cures. In my practice I have never seen the cure of cancer by any of these methods; I have seen a lot of harm done, I believe they shorten the life of the patient, and I believe they deprive one of the ability to prescribe successfully with a homoeopathic remedy, such as Bellis pureness or Cadmium iodide.

You will need an antidote of radium and x-ray in potency. Cadmium iodide, Fl-ac. and Silicea have been my best remedies for the painful effects of radium burns. Both produce, as you know, obliteration of the capillary circulation.

The great difficult in advanced cases of cancer is the inability to obtain therapeutic individualization of symptoms. They have the pathology and all the common symptoms that go with it, but they are not sufficient to make a good homoeopathic prescription. They tell you about cancer, but they tell you only in a very general way of a group of remedies.

The experiments of Crile, his bi-polar theory of living processes, have been very interesting to me. He states that the cancer cell has made a change from its normal bi-polar polarity to that of a positive polarity,. That is exactly what we find in our electronic reactions. Not only is the cancer cell positive, but the patient’s whole blood stream is electromagenetically positive where cancer predominates. We know where the mixed miasms come in and where we have sycosis and syphilis mixed with cancer other polarities may be present.

My experience has been that there is not a case of cancer without a tubercular background. It grows on a tubercular soil. It is the miasms wherein the blending of all the other miasms result.

Pathology is often the only thing you can obtain. In such cases one must go back in the beginning of life, and trace it step by step, his sicknesses, reactions to environment, the history of things that have come upon him by way of accident, and irritations- mall those things, including vaccinations and serums-and better still, the history of his immediate progenitors and his immediate family.

We are all familiar with the crude animal experiments that Dr. Maud Sly of Chicago University has been doing; she has been able to blood cancer in mice families and out of mice families simply by selective mating. These facts establish the inherited causation as a basic causation and many of our allopathic friends are willing to acknowledge that; not all of them, but many do accept these results as evidence that cancer in its incipiency or in its fundamentals is inherited, at least the cell tendency. I prefer to use the word “tendency”; I don’t think a person has top die of cancer because his father and mother had it, but he has that tendency, and that is what you have to consider in the study of the case for a remedy, especially in those cases following injury where they have apparently been in fair or robust health and suddenly after the trauma a lump comes into the breast, in some cases painful and some not. We have two remedies part excellence in such conditions-there are others, but these are the two outstanding remedies that are worth study and consideration.

One of them is Bellis perennis, where there is more or less inflammation and soreness-much like Arnica; but we have the glandular involvement which is not so marked in Arnica. Bellis perennis is better given than Arnica.

The other remedy, with which I have had most success, is Common maculatum, in the case that has a shrivelled breast, with weakness and general symptoms of cachexia coming on.

It is generally distinguished in the large majority of cases by painlessness, or at least the pain doesn’t come on early. I have seen a few painful cases, but they were late cases after they started to break down. Those are my two best remedies.

If you will take up our cancer group and run through the regional areas of cancer wherever our proven remedies have cured conditions, you will find Carbo animalis, Carbo vegetables and Graphites running all through. Those are the most frequent remedies to run all through the various regions.

Dr. Kent’s repertory gives fifty-four remedies for cancer conditions. I am not going to read them because you have the opportunity of getting the information; but these by no means exhaust the list of our cancer remedies. If you will go through Clarke’s Dictionary of Materia Medica you will be astonished at the number of other remedies that have more or less complete provings for ameliorating or curing some forms of cancer.

In late cases where there is much pathology and breaking down of tissue, I am very careful about giving a potency too high. I prefer a long potency, say the 6x, 12x or 30x. You get better results and you do not get those terrible aggravations of the higher potency; if the case happens to be incurable, you are going to hurry that patient on to his death. If he is not incurable and his remedy is similar enough and given in the lower potencies, you will restore balance and relieve pain and bring the well-being of the patient back so he is much more comfortable. If he is a case on the border line that can be cured, you can easily follow the lower with the higher potency.

In the earlier cases I don’t hesitate to give the remedy high and expect him to live through the aggravation.

The patient responds after these prolonged aggravations and you have a very good chance of curing that case. So much for the general consideration of this subject.

Carbo animals is a glandular remedy, and you may have difficulty at times in differentiating between it and Conium. The pathology is very similar, but there is a little differentiation: generally the Carbo animalis has a purplish hue, especially the Carbo animalis has a purplish hue, especially around the area of the breast. There are others differentiations in the general indications if you can dig down through the past history; but it is real, painstaking work to take these cases.

Graphites is very apt to be indicated in cases where the breast has been lanced. In the scars of these lanced breasts you frequently get a case where graphites will delight you with its action. Dr. Kent thought that Graphites was the best remedy of all for cancer of the breast. He hands great faith in the possibilities of that remedy.

Silica was another of the remedies that he employed if the condition were not too far advanced. A number of years ago he showed me a case of an old lady, seventy five years old, who had a breast cancer broken down, ugly looking, extremely painful, much pus. That patient was given Silicea 10 M. There was a grateful aggravation the whole breast sloughed off and healed over perfectly-perfect surgical work done by the homoeopathic remedy. The old lady lived five years and subsequently died of pneumonia.

There are a few remedies that I am mentioning that are not in the repertory as far as I can find. One is Lac caninum. You will be surprised what Lac can, will do in those cases where the breast has been amputated.

Many years ago when I was a student in Hahnemann College, I attended Dr. Kent’s clinic. He very frequently left the whole thing in my charge. A patient came in with a small, painful lump in one breast. There were no symptoms apparent until we got into the history, then we found this: Frequently she had been at another hospital, a few months before she came to us. through the over-zealous acts of a surgeon of great fame who attended, her breast was amputated and all the glands taken out-a very fame who attended, her breast was amputated and all the glands taken out-a very fine operation, for which he demanded 1500 dollars, and took her husband’s little plumbing business away from him to pay that bill. The interesting to us is that a few months later the other breast began to get cancerous condition much the same way-a lump appeared, with all the same symptoms. She refused to be operated, and I assured her that I did not think she would have to be. I saw Lac caninum in the symptomatology and Lac caninum was given in the IM. potency. The result was astonishing,. In a few months that thing had disappeared, the woman’s health was perfect, and two years later she came in periodically to show us that the cure was effective. You can imagine her emotions when she compared what we had done and what the surgeon had done. She wanted to pay us a great deal more than we asked. We insisted that she pay the small price that the clinic demanded of every body, and assured her that as physicians, we could take nothing else. She could hardly get over the fact that for a few cents she was able to receive work so much superior to that the great surgeon had done.

Mauritius Fortier-Bernoville
Mauritius (Maurice) Fortier Bernoville 1896 – 1939 MD was a French orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy to become the Chief editor of L’Homeopathie Moderne (founded in 1932; ceased publication in 1940), one of the founders of the Laboratoire Homeopathiques Modernes, and the founder of the Institut National Homeopathique Francais.

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.