LYCO: The Lycopodium subject who becomes cancerous will localize his tumor preferentially on the liver, stomach or intestine.
SULPHUR: King of Hahnemanns 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 itself in the digestive tract or in an abdominal viscus. 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 ptosis 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 (Pix liquida 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-Hahnemanns great antipsoric-is rather indicated among the precancerous hyperthyroids, 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 disturbance 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 hypertrophied glands especially after syphilis. Kali arsenicum in inveterate skin diseases 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.
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.