The use of vesicatory therapeutics was known since long time ago. This method, was for a long time abandoned. In the modern period and specially in the 19th century the cantharides paste was used several times since twenty years to put the method in use. This was not without reason. Some practitioners continue to use the vesicatory in pleurisies and in some kinds of pains. One should not be surprised because the use of cantharis internally, in homoeopathic dilutions is necessary for the treatment of the effusion of the pleura, when the disease is developed, or in the course of other affections.
But on the therapeutic use that we are going to deal in this article, the paste of cantharides is used only externally to obtain the patient’s own serosity. This serosity (used as it is collected after the rupture of the phlyctenule, or in homoeopathic dilution), which is a real remedy.
History
If I am not mistaken, it is Dr. Artault of Vevy who first tried the phlyctenotherapy, in 1912. Then some other doctors, particularly LASSABLIERE, 1928, in the Hospital of the Associated Leopold-Ballan, tried also in different affections to inject the serious fluid as it is obtained from the blister, sub- cutaneously.
He followed the very simple method as that of the auto-hemotherapy. Amongst the officials, some doctors continue the method as treatment. In the homoeopathic clan it is M. Mondain, the medical officer of the hospital Leopold Ballan, who at first, treated different diseases by this method of auto- phlyctenotherapy in two forms: the simple form by the application of ponderable doses, as Lassabliere do, or in the 3x dilution.
This method was applied for the treatment of extremely varied cases: tuberculosis syphilis, cancer. The authors already mentioned obtained some good ameliorations and even cures: amelioration of the pulmonary tuberculosis, ameliorations of the general conditions and of the sufferings of some patients suffering from cancer. But above all what is most important is in the syphilitic lesions, specially in general paralysis and the negativation of Hecht and Bordet-Wassermann test in 20 to 30 Percent of the cases treated.
Finally, five years ago, auto-phlyctenotherapy was tried successfully in many cases of toxicomania (opium, morphin, alcohol) in Egypt and in France. Not only that some subjects thus treated were disintoxicated, but renounced because of dislike, at least for many months, their dangerous habit.
However, in spite of different results obtained by that method auto-phlyctenotherapy seems to fall into oblivion as regards Official school.
Auto-Phlyctenotherapy – One should ask oneself if the homoeopaths cannot take the benefit of this method, an interesting method of therapeutics. In official school frequently some remedies are abandoned as they are dangerous or so useful because of the want of a technique and the ignorance of dynamisation: thus the serum of Marmoreck and the ebullition of Denys which are still for us some very useful arms in the treatment of the tuberculinics and of persons suffering from tuberculosis. Micrococcin always used by the homoeopaths in precancer stage and in cancers. On the other hand it is the Homoeopaths Hering, Lux, Collet who discovered the beneficial effects of Isopathy of the treatment of the patients by their own substances: dejections, pus, discharges; and auto- phlyctenotherapy, can it not be considered as a method of isopathic treatment. We think that it is.
After reading in a journal of medicine a report of the results obtained by Lassabliere in different patients by the reinjection of the liquid for the blister, I myself have begun following M. Mondain, to transpose this method in homoeopathy towards the end of 1929.
The results that I have obtained are variable: some failures, some simple ameliorations and some cures. The patients treated by this method were a few. So it is not possible to come to a certain conclusion. Nevertheless I believe that it is necessary that it is necessary that many among us should try this method in some difficult cases so as to bring after sometime, out the result of their tentatives in order to obtain some indications. precious and certain on the value of this method.
Action of the Phlyctenular Therapy Now the question is: HOW AUTO PHLYCTENOTHERAPY ACTS? The liquid of the blister is formed by a serous fluid of which the composition is very near to that of the serum of the lymphs of the blood plasma. The action of the medicines on the epiderm is similar to that of all agents of burning; but the definition of the serous fluid of a phlyctenule cannot be found in any book of medicine.
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.