1. Alcoholism



Ignatia. It is a remedy for females which is opposed in a classic fashion to Nux-vomica, a remedy for males, is also a remedy that suits busy men in the share markets, the over – worked intellectuals, hypersensitives, artists whose manifestations are paradoxal in character. But an Ignatia patient does not show urgent need of stimulants. On the contrary, stimulants often aggravate his ills. In another stage arrives when he can no longer bear them or even if he smokes he can no longer bear the smoke of tobacco of others.

But let us now turn to our Nux-vomica, to know how it can suitably be applied to certain alcoholic persons, who can bear neither noise, nor smell, like Ignatia who become irritable and are subject to vertigo always towards the morning until they take breakfast or some stimulants.

Sleep is disturbed, the patient has somnolence after dinner but he wakes up at night at 2 a. m. and cannot sleep again before 5 to 6 a.m., or still more he experiences from the very beginning of the night a total loss of sleep up to 1 O’ clock at night. Heavy head, headache specially on the occiput after a good meal or a good drink. He shows dyspeptic troubles, nausea, vomiting sometimes sour taste in the mouth and a sensation of weight as if a stone was lodged in the stomach. He thinks that he will be better if he vomits but he cannot or only after great effort. Nux-vomica suits particularly to persons who have nausea and morning pituitus.

Lycopodium. An alcoholic person, feels the need of Lycopodium when he has overworked his liver by his bad habits.

Patient begins to be dyspeptic – he goes to the table with a good appetite but is soon satisfied with a few mouthfuls, fulness of the abdomen is extreme, inspite of the most meagre meal. Frequent goes in the intestines; flatus predominantly passing below. Small liver, insufficient, painful, and sensitive. Constipation constant, small stools, insufficient, hard and difficult to pass.

He is irritable. Patient loses confidence in himself. Loss of memory, forgets words and commits mistakes while writing. Apprehensive and melancholic. Feels fatigued in the morning and takes a very pessimistic view of life.

Urine is often full of Urobinine. There exists sometimes in the lower extremities sciatic pains. The disease which represents an association of alcoholic polyneuritis, with a hepatic insufficiency generally passes through the Lycopodium stage before becoming a Phosphorus state.

We must not forget the great characteristic of Lycopodium. Aggravation from 4 to 8 p.m. and mostly at 5 p.m. It is a rightsided remedy. Thermal unstability one foot hot and the other cold.

Lachesis. This serpent poison is very curious and very important to study as a basic remedy of alcoholism. It suits as well to intemperance, persons who are suffering for their bad habit from deep glandular troubles, as women who have arrived at the stage of menopause or an overworked mental condition, after a long and painful effort for producing something.

The Sulphur patient who was has some congestive troubles, gush of heat in the head arterial hypertension very often goes towards Lachesis, at the end, with the same symptoms in these two remedies but in Lachesis with varicocities on the cheeks and nose. Lips are purple and sometimes livid.

The sensitiveness of a patient is such that he cannot bear to have anything tight around his neck or a band of any sort. This difficulty of having anything tight is more marked in the neck, chest and in the waist. Left sidedness like Sulphur. Intense headache aggravated in the sun and in the heat with throbbing, flamming sparks before the eyes. There may be vertigo. Liver is very sensitive. Cannot bear the least pressure, sometimes even the clothes and covers of the bed are thrown away by the person on account of the impossibility that he feels to bear their weight. There exists very often pain in the tibias.

In the case of acute alcoholism we note loquacious delirium a condition of mania with manifested jealousy, suspicious without motive or mysticism or religious ideas.

We must not forget the great modality of Lachesis aggravation during and after sleep.

The patient of Lachesis can keep himself in approximate equilibrium so long as he is awake because he may then control his sympathetic nervous system but if he let the parasympathetic dominate in him everything in him will be aggravated. It is because he sleeps so ill with nightmares, death-like sensation, dreams of funeral and of his own death, it, therefore, he wakes up after a few minutes with stuffed sensation.

Phosphorus. It is hardly classic to put Phosphorus, in the first plan of the ground remedies of alcoholic persons. This is a mistake in our opinion because in each case there exists nervous or glandular degeneration Phosphorus is indicated.

Prostration, fainting, easy sweats, tendency to fatty degeneration vertigo when rising up, different neuralgias, deep sensoral troubles, in the ears as well as in the eyes, vomiting of water taken as soon as it becomes hot in the stomach. Tendency to painless debilitating diarrhoea with great weakness after stool; such are the habitual symptoms of this medicine. Moreover we will note a weak heart, fainting, violent palpitations, small and rapid pulse related to the dilatation of the right heart, sometimes even with a certain degree of arterial hypertension.

Mentally the patient is at first hypersensitive, exalted at last indifferent and depressed.

Liver is large and painful. The patient suffers first of all hepatic congestion, then from hypertrophic pyrosis. But at other times he may also, if he shows cirrhosis of Laennec with a small liver, be treated with Phosphorus, which exist some motor or nervous troubles in the extremities related to neuralgias, neuritis and polyneuritis. Arm and leg get benumbed.

Phosphorus like Lycopodium is as well a remedy of alcoholics cirrhosis as ethylic polyneuritis or of the syndrome of Korsakoff.

These are the great remedies or the remedies of morbid temperaments of alcoholic persons. It is easy to understand and remember them by their symptoms.

Sulphur, before all is indicated by congestion, Nux by desire and abuse of stimulants and consequently by some dyspeptic troubles, nervous and sensorial hyperexcitability. Lycopodium represents hepatic insufficiency and insufficiency of small liver. Lachesis is indicated by profoundly deranged glandular function as well as by tumours. Phosphorus is indicated in a tendency to degeneration, cerebral or sensorial, as well as of peripheral nerves and of hepatic parenchyma.

4. Functional Remedies

We shall divide them into six groups in order to study them in a more schematised manner, because the essential thing is always to give our work a practical basis. The schema published here with will allow us to connect them with their contemporaries and to medicines of temperament:

1. In delirium tremens: Absinthium, Stramonium, Hyoscyamus, Belladonna, Atropinum.

2. In spasms, cramps and tremblings: Cimicifuga, Agaricus, Gelsemium, Strychninum, Phosphorus.

3. In nervous and mental troubles: Avena sativa, Kali phos kali bromatum and Passiflora.

4. In digestive and hepatic troubles: China, Digitalis and Kali bichromicum.

5. In tendency to uremia and apoplexy: Opium, Cuprum ars.

6. In pleurodynia and neuralgia: Ranunculus.

1. Delirium Tremens

Absinthium. Absinthium produces in time of experiment delirium tremens and it is due to the prohibition of manufacture of liquors that contains it, that the cases of delirium tremens have become rare in France. It has some convulsive epileptiform movements, hallucinations and loss of consciousness. Intense trembling. Fearful visions, patient becomes wicked and brutal.

Stramonium. Delirium and violent fury. Desire for beating, biting and tearing. Rhythmical convulsive movements in bends. Loquacious delirium. The patient laughs, prays, vows, and cries. Cannot bear solitude or darkness. He wants light and society. Often he seeks the way to escape. He is full of hallucinations, extends his voice, speaks with eagerness. In visual hallucinations the patient thinks himself greater than he is.

Hyoscyamus. This plant tallies with Belladonna and Stramonium in nervous manifestation.

Obscure delirium, less furious than that of Stramonium. Nervous restlessness, jerkings, dancing of muscles, suspicious, or still more he begins to laugh without stop; or he speaks low and murmurs between his teeth in prostrated and stupified condition. Aggravation at night and when lying down.

Belladonna. Delirium, the patient seeks to escape out of his bed and runs away. Dilation of pupils. Photophobia. There exists no habitual loquacity as in Stram, or Hyosc. but the patient complains of a headache specially in the forehead, increased by light and noise when lying down. There exists always a dryness of mouth and throat.

There may exist some hallucinations with hazy images. The patient sees some monstrous and hideous faces.

Atropine. Dilatation of pupils, photophobia, great dryness of the throat with extreme difficulty of deglutition, visual hallucinations, things seem to be very big.

2. Spasms Tremblings Cramps

Cimicifuga. Dancing of muscles and cramps all over the body. The patient experiences cramps in the long muscles and above all in calves. He is agitated. He may have some access to delirium tremens sometimes in course of which he has visual hallucinations. He sees rats and mice. He hurts himself and has an insane condition or he may speak without stop.

Mauritius Fortier-Bernoville
Mauritius (Maurice) Fortier Bernoville 1896 – 1939 MD was a French orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy to become the Chief editor of L’Homeopathie Moderne (founded in 1932; ceased publication in 1940), one of the founders of the Laboratoire Homeopathiques Modernes, and the founder of the Institut National Homeopathique Francais.

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.