The scheme of Dr. Bernoville summarises clearly the fundamentals of this important and interesting lecture.
REMEDIES OF THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM
In this first lecture on the drainage of the Respiratory system Dr. Bernoville will speak on the generalities. In the three following lectures Dr. Bernoville will study completely the remedies of drainage of the Respiratory system.
To-day Dr. Bernoville enlightens us about how to understand the drainage of the respiratory system which is quite different from the drainage of the other apparatuses of the organism.
After having recalled here the classification of human types of Sigaud and the morphologists into four basic temperaments, and physiopathological classification of Dr. Allendy based on the tonicity and the plasticity of the organism, the lecturer compares the respiratory system considered in relation to its aerian milieu, with the digestive system, which is a way to drainage, a way to quantitative drainage, with urinary apparatus which is a way to qualitative as well as quantitative drainage, the digestive system and the renal ways being the most important for elimination and finally the passage through the skin, the surface zone between man and his exterior milieu, which is an accessory way, but very interesting for derivation. The respiratory system as a way of elimination is less important than the four others, but it is more subtle. It should be considered from the energetic point of view and only secondarily as a local way of elimination by the help of expectoration. On the whole, on the respiratory system one should do drainage for derivation more than direct drainage.
Physiology teaches us that air inspirated contains Oxygen and Nitrogen, some Hydrogen, some rare gases, a small quantity of Ozone and a small quantity of Carbonic acid (4.01 Percent instead of 0.1 Percent in inspirated air) and more water vapour. In the inspirated air one should take into consideration the purity of the air or on the contrary the impurity by dust or micro-organism and in the expirated air the possibility of rejection of some chemical products in gaseous form, and caloric elimination. Thus the respiratory system is as well centripetal as centrifugal. The quality of expirated air plays an important part in the treatment of the diseases of the respiratory system and also of respiratory rhythm. The drainage of the respiratory system, therefore, aims at the establishment of the normal physiological balance. One will often use some medicines which have not so much an action on the nose, larynx, bronchuses or lungs than action on the bulbar centres, on the pneumogastric or sympathetic systems.
Let us deal schematically the states of hypersphyxia, then hyposphyxia and asphyxia in relation to our important remedies of temperament.
1. Hypersphyxia. It is the question for example to check in tubercular patient who has cavity in evolution the forge-like respiration. Practically in such a case one should take recourse to all sorts of collapsotherapy: Pneumothorax, phrenicecotomy and even thoroplasty.
In homoeopathy we have a remedy that should be indicated in hypersphyxia. If one intoxicates a subject with Phosphorous, one causes a exaggerated combustion in him, literally one “burns” him. Phosphorous, one knows, is the greatest reducer of all bodies by oxygen created by it. And it is, therefore, a fact on which there is the necessity to insist. Here the law of similars is not applicable. Phosphorous is a marvellous remedy but it should never be used in cases of tuberculosis or in laryngial tuberculosis specially in high dilutions because it may cause dangerous aggravation and to produce pulmonary incendiary transforming sclerous tuberculosis into tuberculosis with cavity. The Oxygenotherapy will cause the same thing. Asthma may be ameliorated by oxygen or by ozone manipulated carefully, because asthma is a state of hyposphyxia, but we must also know that a sclerous asthmatic patient may become tuberculous and a caseous tuberculous patient may become asthmatic after his cure.
2.Hyposphyxia. Dr. Allendy in his work on the study of temperaments gives an important schema consisting of three comparative curves: excretion of urea in the urine, variations of temperature of the body and curve of the respiration during 24 hours. If one counts the respiratory movements during 24 hours, if one measures frequently during 24 hours with spirometre or by another registering apparatus used in physiology one will see very soon that the respiratory activity is not the same always during a day. The respiratory activity is the highest when the subject is awake between 10 a.m. to 4 to 5 p.m. The curious fact is that, that period corresponds to the highest solar activity. The diminution of respiratory activity is very important during the night, specially from midnight to 3 to 4 a.m. The curve of urea excretion on the contrary is maximum in a normal subject at night. Let us remark also that the deaths from chronic diseases generally occurs more frequently towards 3 a.m. i, e., the most relaxing hour of the respiratory activity and the overwork of the renal function.
These notions are important in the sense they allow to base homoeopathy from the point of view of physiology. The aggravation times of our medicines are thus explained. The patient of Lachesis temperament which is our important remedy has an aggravation during sleep because the intoxication caused by this venom causes an important hyposphyxia and the hyposphyxia being aggravated because of the hyposphyxia caused by the physiology of sleep. It is also because the state of vagotonia cannot be tolerated by the subject even when he is in normal sleep. The subject suitable to Lachesis wakes up after a few minutes of his sleep in the prey of a dream. He thought that he was closed in a coffin box, where he was suffocating, or in a cave where he was condemned to die, etc… He sighs, he tries to breathe deeply, he complains of a vague anxiety. All these troubles are related mostly to the excess of CO2 in the blood, increasing more because of the physiological diminution of respiration during night (respiratory activity diminishes by about 1/4). This hyposphyxia, which is expressed by the symptoms of Lachesis are frequent in women of menopausal period.
By the side of Lachesis there are other remedies that have aggravation at night which are related to the diminution of respiration, specially some remedies of asthma. Natrum muriaticum has asthmatic fit from 2 to 5 a.m. Arsenic from midnight to 3 a.m. Kali Carbonicum and Kali bichromicum from 2 to 3 a.m., Thuya 4 a.m. Sulphur, Psorinum and Natrum sulphuricum from 2 to 5 a.m. The need for breathing deeply that we have seen in Lachesis exists in other remedies of less grave states specially in Ignatia, an important remedy of vagosympathetic troubles, in Pulsatilla and Tuberculinum, remedies of tuberculous and pretuberculous oxygenoid types. The need for air is somewhat instinctive. Patients suitable to Pulsatilla and Tuberculinum, if sent in the village, their low temperature diminishes, they take up weight and they do well. If at the same time they are given Tuberculinum after sufficient drainage his health will recoup more rapidly.
3. The state of cyanosis. When there is cyanosis in a person either because of cardiac collapse or for another cause with a great diminution of respiratory activity three or four remedies are of first importance. They are: Carbo vegetabilis Cuprum metallicum and Veratrum album.
Carbo vegetabilis suits to patients suffering from a long time. Great atony of the digestive system; obesity with soft tissues, and suffering from important troubles of the principal visceras, specially from asthma with cyanotic state. Besides Carbo vegetabilis is also a remedy of agony; in this remedy one finds the diminution of respiratory activity, in its highest degree and diminution of the general and local temperature. The subject’s nose, knees and extremities are cold. The most paradoxal fact is that he wants cold air and asks to be fanned (instinctive reaction of asphyxia). Carbo vegetabilis is after all a “burnt” subject, a, patient at the end of his life, who has no more heat, quite the opposite of Sulphur of which the subject “burns”, his internal combustion is aggravated and his vital energy is exteriorised.
Cuprum metallicum is a remedy of cyanosis with spasms and of typical asthma. It is also a remedy of hiccup, of tics, of onychophagia (Gelsemium).
Veratrum album. It has great vagotonia in its pathogenesis: diarrhoea algies, cold sweats, vomiting, convulsions, cramps extremely painful colics, extreme weakness with cyanosis after stools. We know that Veratrum album forms with Camphor, Cuprum metallicum and Arsenic an important group of medicines of cholera.
4. Hyposphyxia with a state of vagotonia. Let us now take up other medicines of the vagus, diaphragm and even of the bulbar respiratory system. These remedies have also symptoms of hyposphyxia. They act on the respiratory system in an indirect way. They are essentially the remedies of asthma.
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.