It is essential often to employ it in middle potencies in tumors and high potencies in the pretumoral phase. Fargas also used Silicic acid in hypodermic injections, he claims with success, in several cases of cancer. Like Iodium, Silicea is demineralized and wastes very rapidly.
LYCOPODIUM: Antipsoric like Calcarea carbonica and Sulphur, Lycopodium evolutes toward cancer through its hepatic insufficiency. Its action fortifies against the precancerous state. In confirmed cancer it barely has any value since it has no power over the tumoral element as have Thuja, Iodium of Silicea.
If the hepatic insufficiency is great is should be cautiously employed in low potencies for even the 30th has often shown itself to be dangerous, in cases of hepatic blockage. It is here that the necessity for a good preliminary general drainage makes itself felt.
The Lycopodium subject who becomes cancerous will localize his tumor preferentially on the liver, stomach or intestine.
SULPHUR: King of Hahnemann’s antipsorics, Sulphur ought to be reserved for the pretumoral state. It has no favorable action in a confirmed cancer, even at the start, and can even be dangerous in this case by favoring the propagation of neoplastic cells and the wasting. On the contrary, it is essential to know that it is to be prescribed at times among these patients, generally hypertensives, whose general arterial hypertension is accompanied by an intense portal congestion which is both arterial and venous. This relieves bleeding haemorrhoids. This abdominal arteriovenous hypertension is the prelude of a cancer which will preferably localize it-self in the digestive tract or in an abdominal viseus.
In these cases an untimely local treatment, as in stopping bleeding haemorrhoids, can be very dangerous.
SEPIA: The morbid personality of Sepia is often noted in subjects in whom cancer is imminent. This remedy, like Sulphur and Lycopodium, acts favorably on a disturbed general state, but not on a tumoral element. It is characterized by a venous portal hypertension, the abdominal congestion predominating especially in the pelvis, and is not accompanied, as in Sulphur, by an arterial participation. The atony determines ptoses and the “bearing down” sensations. The endocrinal disturbances (liver, adrenals genitalia) cause the characteristic facies and the cutaneous pigmentary modifications.
Untreated, Sepia will develop rather toward a cancer of the pelvis-uterus, rectum, sigmoid colon, prostate.
PETROLEUM: This remedy is allied to Sulphur. It is curious to observe the cancerous tendency of Petroleum or of benzol and the derivatives of the oil (Pixliquida and the aniline compounds as I have already recorded). All these products act rather on the neoplastic tendency of the skin. Petroleum has cracks (<) in winter, by cold. Its intolerance for cabbages is accompanied by digestive disturbances and errors of treatment. It can also develop toward a neoplasm of the digestive mucosa as well as toward cutaneous cancer. Petroleum directs itself toward surface cancers (skin, mucosa) and not toward bulky cancers (glands).
THE CALCAREAS: Of the three great calcium salts, Calcarea fluorica is the only one which exhibits a neoplastic element. It confers on glands or connective tissue a stony induration. It is related to Silicea. It acts as well in breast and uterine cancers as in those in other organs. Calcarea phosphorica has hardly any action either in cancer or in the precancerous state. Calcarea carbonica-Hahnemann’s great antipsoric-is rather indicated among the precancerous hypothyroids, hypersensitive to cold and chilly, with flaccid muscles and integument, malnourished, invaded by adipose tissue. Blood clotting times is increased. (Joseph Roy in his blood examinations has demonstrated the frequency of too rapid clotting in cancer and precancerous cases). The subject wastes rapidly after an initial phase of false plethora and fatty invasion. Calcarea carbonica can materialize, therapeutically, the demineralizing factor in cancer. It can act selectively on the glandular hypertrophy. In suspicious and indolent ulcerations, in engorgement of lymph glands, Calcarea iodata will be indicated. Calcarea oxalica should act on the pains in ulcerating cancers.
THE KALIS: It is known that there exists in cancer disturbances of potassium metabolism as well as those of calcium, sodium and magnesium. To tell the truth, the Kalis are remedies of secondary importance in confirmed cancer. However, the precancerous cases often require Kali carbonicum (weakness, chills, lumbar pains, sweats, wasting) or of Kali bichromicum (gastric or pyloric ulcer which can develop into malignant degeneration; sluggish ulcerations, indolent, with perpendicular borders, thick discharges, viscous and flowing gently). But we shall think especially of Kali iodatum because of its selective action on the infiltrated connective tissue and on the hypertrophied glands especially after syphilis. Kali arsenicum in inveterate skin disease with fissures and malignant tendency. Kali cyanatum in lingual cancer.
THE NATRUMS: Natrum muriaticum corresponds much more to the tuberculinique state than to the precancerous state. However, among decalcified subjects it is occasionally indicated. Natrum sulphuricum is suitable to the sycotic and hydrogenoid states, sensitive to damp cold, in which the association of sycosis and psora can prepare the birth of a malignant tumor.
THE CARBOS: Carbo vegetabilis, for deficient vitality, for deficient oxygenation and nutrition, presenting a gastrointestinal atony already old and stubborn, may be indicated in cancer (especially digestive) or the precancerous state. But Carbo animalis is one of the best remedies for the established tumor; hard tumor, indurated and swollen lymphatic glands, subcutaneous venous distention, bluish discoloration of infiltrated tissues, burning pains, gastric flatulence. It has an especial selective action on the breast or stomach cancer and merits special mention not only for its beneficial effects on the general state (gain of weight or temporary arrest of wasting) but also for its action on the tumor itself which regresses, becomes less hard with amelioration of pains.
GRAPHITES: Subject is extremely psoric very chilly, oozing eruptions, obstinate constipation. Graphites can characterize, in certain cases, the precancerous state with tendency to induration of tissues and degeneration of cicatrices.
CAUSTICUM: Very clearly this antipsoric, at the same time sycotic, often veers toward cancer: emaciation, dirty yellow color, terrified aspect, tendency to facial warts, etc. In Causticum, as in other remedies.
The mental signs often are of great importance in order to characterize and individualize the patient; the precancerous subject frequently presents a weakened morale, sadness, obsessions, fear of the future, anguish, exaggeration of the sensitivity; likewise, the mental type of Causticum (hypersensitive, altruistic, sadness) or of Thuja (fixed ideas) or of Iodium (anxiety) and other remedies shall have to be considered in the choice of the basic remedy.
ARSENICUM ALBUM: Very important and often indicated, Arsenicum, by its prostration, alternating or coexisting with a certain agitation, by its burning pains, (>) by heat, its characteristic horary, clearly individualizes many confirmed cancer cases to whom it will often bring a temporary amelioration, transitory or slightly prolonged, as in very weak precancerous subjects. Selective action on the cancroids (with Thuja and Cinnabaris).
PHOSPHORUS: Poorly known, this remedy can clearly act with success before the tumoral phase when the degeneration of a gland and its nuclei is yet hardly delineated. Phosphorus has first a selective action on the higher tissues in contrast to Silicea, its complementary, which presents an efficacity for interstitial tissues. It is especially in hepatic and pancreatic cancer that Phosphorus appears. Although of secondary importance, it is worthy of attention.
MERCURIUS: By its nocturnal aggravation, its engorgement of lymphatic glands, its bleeding ulcerations, its prostration, its sweats its oral fetor, Mercurius and its salts can be retained in cancer which is localized on a part of the digestive tract, especially if it follows a former syphilis. The most interesting of the mercury salts is Cinnabaris (or Mercurius sulphuratus ruber) in condylomata which may or may not be degenerated.
NITRIC ACID: Let us remember of this remedy, complementary to Mercurius and Calcarea carbonica, its tendency to fissures and painful ulcerations (sensation of fine needles), the debility, the demineralization, the progressive wasting and thinning. It is to be thought of, then, in confirmed cancer in which it can act, if not on the general state, at least on the painful element.
NUX VOMICA and IGNATIA: Finally, these two strychnias which are not, properly speaking, remedies for the precancerous state. They merit mention, however, because of the frequency and importance of their mental signs and the beneficial action they are capable of establishing in the neuro-vegetative system and morale of our patients who are cancerous or have a cancerous tendency.
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.