I. Opotherapy is an important branch of therapeutics. It is admitted in both the schools. Allopathy and Homoeopathy. It may give unappreciable results on condition:
(a) Really active products (fresh products, taken out of young healthy animals just killed. The glands taken out of animal that are aged are useless, as well as the extracts taken out of the animals after death). Sometimes the extracts are taken out of the living animals.
(b) The second condition for the doctor who uses opotherapy is to know exactly the indications of the endocrinal products and their posology. It is the questions of a science of therapeutics hardly cleared yet and numerous doctors disdain it because they are ignorant of it or they do not know it well.
I admit that I am far from knowing well opotherapy; so I am forced to send my patients to my more qualified friends than I am for the prescriptions of gland extracts. In the Homoeopathic circle Drs. Barishac, Dano and Martiny have rendered us immense services because of their knowledge and their practice of opotherapy classic and new, in gross and homoeopathic doses.
II. One should guard oneself to prescribe systematically. The morbid states are to be well characterised, the indications of the gland extracts should be very evident in order that one may prescribe.
III. A distinction should be made between different doses in which the extracts are to be prescribed.
According to the law of similitude the homoeopathic doses should naturally be indicated in the cases habitually inverse of the gross doses. As for example: the thyroid in gross doses in myxoedema, in homoeopathic doses in Basedow’s disease).
The rule of posology is the following: as it is formulated by Dr. Martiny and according to my own experience:
1. The strong gross doses are for SUBSTITUTIONS.
Example: the liver extract in deep insufficient action of the liver.
2. The weak gross doses (microdoses) and the homoeopathic dilutions (lower) are excitative: Example: Liver extract 3x in slight hepatic insufficiency.
3. In some cases, some weak ponderable doses (microdoses) and the lower homoeopathic doses check. Example: 1/100 or 1.10 milligramme as is prescribed by Leopold Levi in hyperthyroidism. Thyroid 6 (trit) decimal in the Basedow’s disease.
4. The medium dilutions often act as a check (in hyperfunctions) sometimes regulate (dysfunction): Example: Supra renal 30, in the dysfunction of the suprarenal.
5. Same is the case as regards high dilutions which are often very active, check or regulate. As for example: Thyroidea (1,000 in Basedow’s disease).
6. The mixture of higher and lower dilutions and medium dilutions seem to be excitative to the highest point and at the same time regulative. Example: Liver 200/3x in hepatic insufficiency; Spleen 200/6x in cardio-renal state with oliguria, a dose of each alternating every 12 to 24 hours.
Now here are the principal opotherapic remedies that I apply in homoeopathic doses. (I will not explain them in detail on their uses in ponderable doses, for which I take the advise of Leopold Levi).
THYROIDEA: Used in ponderable doses in the different cases of thyroid insufficiency. Remarkable action of the thyroid in small increasing doses in retarded children and in the state of marasmus. This is how Dr. Dano use it.
Homoeopathic doses: Thyroidea 6x, trituration a pinch to be taken every day in a little water. Indications: Slight or temporary Basedow’s disease; Thyroidea 30, 200, 1,000 in confirmed Basedow’s disease. According to the indications of Dr. Barishac, there is the necessary to repeat the dose frequently, every day even the 1,000th centesimal of Korsakoff.
Parathyroid: Ponderable doses. Insufficiency of the parathyroid Spasms, Tetanus. The action is often interesting in aerophagia (associated or not with liver extract). Troubles of the metabolism of Calcium.
Homoeopathic doses: No personal experience.
Suprarenal and Adrenalin: Ponderable doses: arterial hypotension, acute cases when it is necessary to act very soon to remedy the great insufficiency of the suprarenal.
Medium dilutions: (30 Korsakoff): It also acts very well as it is used by Dr. A. Nebel in the hypofunction or dysfunction of the suprarenal. Dr. Nebel bases his prescription very often on a particular symptom which is less known, which consists in a pigmentation (clear or temporary) on the small joints of the fingers, seen on the dorsal face (it seems that the patient has badly washed his hands.)
High dilutions: to be used in inverse cases i.e. to say in hypersuprarenalism. Suprarenal 200 or 1000 Korsakoff in lasting arterial hypertension with paroxysms caused by emotions (emotive hyperadrenalin, psychological shock described by Joltrain)
Ovary: Ponderable doses, used according to the classical indications for the ovarian insufficiency.
There is ground to try the homoeopathic doses of hormones of the genital glands.
After Pouliot and Martiny, I have used with success Folliculine in homoeopathic doses 30 and 200, 1,000 in hypermenorrhoea, menorrhagia, metrorrhagia. The action is remarkable; amelioration or cure within a short period thanks to Folliculine 200 or 1000, a dose every seven days, alternated or associated with Crot. horridus 200.
In the inverse order, the yellow pigment, Lutein seems to be an excellent remedy in homoeopathic doses for some hormonal troubles for the stoppage or diminutions of the ovarian activity: hypercholesteremia, biliary lithiasis, cholecystitis.
Orchitine: In ponderable doses, the male gland is used according to the classical indications of insufficiency. Impotence; in women troubles due to continence and senility etc.
In homoeopathic doses of orchitine should act in priapism and in hypersexuality.
Hypophyse (Pituitary) (total, anterior or posterior). In ponderable doses according to classical indications, Let us note that Postpituitary is interesting to use as adjuvant for the contraction of muscles which are injured in different cases, for example to press a parasited biliary vesicule or a vesicule infested with lambalias.
Homoeopathic doses: No personal experience.
Epiphysis: No personal experience.
Thymus: Ponderable doses for children of insufficient or troubled growth. I have no personal experience of homoeopathic doses.
LIver: Hepatic opotherapy has made incontestable progress during the last few years and shows the primordial interest of the technique for the perfect preparation of the products of endocrines. At the beginning the liver extracts did hardly act. Now the liver extracts have become very valuable. The ponderable doses are used with great success in the case of functional insufficiency of the liver. Sometimes the subcutaneous injections are more useful than the application by mouth, when one wishes to act rapidly.
In lower dilutions 1x and 3x, gives some results by exciting a slightly insufficient gland. As regards myself I have obtained good results with Liver and Pancreas, 3x trituration, a pinch of the powder while taking meal, once or twice a day in migraines.
In other cases, the exciting action is reinforced by giving the liver extract in 200C Korsakoff, or by mixing the 200th and the 3rd or the 6th trituration decimal.
Pancreas, Insuline: The insuline is to be used in ponderable doses in diabetes mellitus, according to the classical rules. The homoeopathic treatment thanks to some new remedies such as Ammonium iodatum, Cephalandra indica, Syzygium jambolanum etc., and thanks also to the judicious application of ground remedies (specially. Arsenicum Album M) would help to reduce notably the quantities of insuline which is necessary.
M. Martiny has also successfully used Insuline 30.
The Extract of Pancreas 3x, trituration seems very often to give interesting results for exciting a gland more or less insufficient particularly in some cases of diarrhoea and above all in migraines. In the latter case it acts conjointly with Iris versicolor of which the action on the pancreas is well known.
Kidney: In ponderable doses, the extract of kidney has proved to be useful if one has a good stock and if the preparation has been done according to a superior technique.
Lower, medium or even high dilutions of the extract of kidney may also be used.
Let us note that according to Barishac, we have some good results with kidney 200/3x, Kidney 200/6x alternated every 12 or 24 hours in persons suffering from cardiac oliguria.
I have also obtained some good results in hydrogenoids and Carbonitrogenoids having insufficient elimination by using Vesica P (dilution of the bladder of pig prepared by the late abbey Pegeaud).
Myocardia: Like kidney extract, the extract of myocardia in ponderable doses or in homoeopathic doses according to the case, give some unquestionable results.
M. Martiny has indicated that the restlessness caused in many cases by the use of extracts may be compared with the same indications of Arsenicum album. This remedy seems therefore complementary in this case.
We have not sufficient experience about other extracts of organs so that we may speak about them. In some isolated cases I have obtained, some interesting results with Mucus of the small intestines, appendix, placenta, mammary gland in homoeopathic doses 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.