While taking up the General Homoeopathic treatment and study of Syphilis, which include the real meaning of this disease and its therapeutics, we must recall to ourselves that our Master Hahnemann considered it as one of the three miasms with Psora and Sycosis.
For a long time Psora was not well understood. It seems to us that the problem of Psora has now been solved. Its meaning seems to be easy. The question has now been solved. It is defined with chronic Tuberculinism, as it is taught to us by Dr. A. Nebel.
As regards sycoses, we have recently tried to broach it and we have indicated its starting points: chronic gonorrhoea, vaccination, anti-variolic and others, repeated serotherapy and perhaps also some malarial conditions more or less latent and ancient even hereditary, generations of hydrogenoid temperament.
Finally as regards Syphilis, it is as present extremely difficult to speak of it with certainty and it may be said that hesitations and groping are continuing since many years in the Official School as well as in the Homoeopathic School.
There is always the “Problem of Syphilis”, which is not yet solved.
The Problem of Syphilis:
In the time of Hahnemann the question seemed more clear because very little was known at that time. Hahnemann, like all other doctors of his time included in Syphilis, the soft chancre, genital herpes and all sorts of cutaneous manifestations. On the contrary he could not include in Syphilis some tertiary manifestations, visceral or nervous of which one could then neither suspect nor understand the mechanism because the germ in cause was not known.
You know that there came the school of St. Louis. Fournier admirably described Syphilis and its real manifestations, which he distinguished from para-syphilitic manifestations of the tertiary period such as tables and general progressive paralysis. Then one could understand that it is necessary to relate them directly with Syphilis.
How the syphilis was treated at that time? In both the Schools it was treated by Mercury.
The pathogenesis of Mercury is very similar to the clinical picture of syphilis in all its stages. On the whole, the question was simple because, thanks to ignorance, of the science of treating, syphilis was reduced to a very elementary level, and if one could not cure all the cases, at least one could not aggravate the diseases. Perhaps some cases were cured but not as many as it is cured today. Everything was simple, but it was necessary to pass through the stage of the first knowledge while discovering the germ itself and afterwards destroying them by all specific medicines.
Then the problem became extremely, difficult, even unsolvable.
You known that before the war of 1914, Gaucher who succeeded Fournier, rose against the German medicines 606 and 914 and the Arsenobenzol compounds which came to us from Germany. He remained for a long time faithful to Mercury.
After sometimes this last metal was almost abandoned and doctors become infatuated with Arsenic.
In order to understand the problem of syphilis we are forced, before speaking of Homoeopathic treatment, to recall to ourselves what is actually known and what is still doubtful in the Official School.
We must first of all state the fact that so long as one was faithful to the only clinic, if one could not cure the syphilitics one did not aggravate the disease. When laboratory became more important, the clinic was neglected to end in the treatment in series. Then some disasters were seen side by side with some “washing” or ameliorations, which were sometimes only superficial and purely temporary.
There is a small book published in 1927, which shows many hesitations and tentatives of the contemporary period as regards syphilis (Sedillot: Le role du terrain dans l’evolution de Syphilis). Some points of view of the author are nearer to our ideas, although in some cases differ very much from our ideas. He was neither an adept nor even I think he had any sympathy towards Homoeopathy, but we may in a completely impartial way praise his book because it is really interesting and curious to read the book.
Sedillot schematises the evolution of Syphilis in a very seducive manner:
The troublesome treponema, it is the primary and secondary syphilis.
The silent treponema, it is the beginning of the tertiary stage without manifestations.
The dangerous treponema, it is the tertiary stage with manifestations which appear at the 40th or 50th year of age, the moment when sclerosis begins in the organism.
The author then presents some conceptions in a very clear manner. The work is full with citations in support of the doctrine upheld.
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.