This condition of hesitation is followed by an intense depression with fear and a sensation as if a cloud develops and envelops his head.
In the modalities we find aggravation in the morning specially at intervals. The disease belongs to feminine sex and is always aggravated during the periods (Inversely Lach).
Agaricus. Cramps and muscular dancing. Very violent spasms Vertigo in the sun when walking. All sorts of neuralgias with a sensation of icy coldness in the head, often the patient has polyneuritis, sensation of pricking by icy pins. Chorea like spasms, troubled sleep, the patient wakes up no sooner he is asleep, and is a prey to twitchings of muscles.
Mentally he may have some fits of delirium tremens during which he has loquacity; he sings, murmurs, composes poems, or prophesies. Later condition of intense hesitation of gaiety: there generally may exist another period of violence and injury. Sometimes the patient at this stage is besides himself and injures his own person In the last stage the depression carries him with langour, indifference and incapacity for work and even mental confusion.
In polyneuritis the symptoms appear diagonally, as for example, in the lower part of right and the upper part of the left legs.
3. Predominance of the Reflex Symptoms
Gelsemium. Vertigo, somnolence and trembling, slow pulse, mental apathy and sensation of muscular weakness and prostration. Often patient desires to be alone and calm. Always he is the prey to all emotions, fears, excessive excitement by all news and circumstances to come.
In the face we see some signs of ptosis; eyelids are heavy, the patient can hardly open them, sensation of smoke, possibility of dilatation of pupils, and diplopia above all.
But the key-note symptoms in Gelsemium, are the tremblings and the weakness of limbs. It is why we place it in the first place in the peripheric phenomena of nervous system of alcoholic patients.
Strychninum and Strychninum Phosphorus Spasms are much more violent than in Nux or Ignatia. The reflex symptoms are aggravated. Muscle dancing, convulsive movements, stiffness of the muscles of the face or of the neck. Opisthotonos. Spasms appear very often and come at periodic intervals, if not very frequently. The patient is very irritable, cramps are very painful and come very often.
Strychninum phos resembles to Strychninum with a great weakness of muscles, or the period of relaxing may reach up to a atony and degeneration. Tendency to paralysis.
Sticky sweat in the arm pits.
4. Nervous and Mental Troubles
Avena Sativa. Suits as well to alcoholism as to morphine mania This remedy is always indicated in insomnia of alcoholic patients, with nervous weakness, debility, frequent trembling, impossibility to concentrate the mind upon any subject; neuralgic headache, and decalcification (Phosphaturia).
Passiflora. This remedy is specially for insomnia, might also be indicated in drunkards who cannot sleep and who has nocturnal spasms with a habitual atony, convulsive movements, and restlessness with weakness afterwards. Passiflora specially acts in intellectual diseases or in diseases of cerebral origin. It might also be indicated in some cases of delirium tremens and like Avena-sativa may be applied in morphiromania.
Kali phos. It is a remedy of neurasthenia of the prostrated condition of mind and of the body, long standing depression with impossibility of accomplishing any work. Anxiety, irritability, loss of memory, nocturnal fears. What is called “cerebral anemia” is generally an indication of this medicine. Headache mostly occipital and frequently with vertigo. Empty sensation in the epigastrium. Rest and heat ameliorate the ills. Cold, mental or physical work aggravates.
Kali Bromicum. Weakness, melancholy, mental depression with tendency to delirium of religious matters and of persecution. Nocturnal fears and terrifying dreams. Grinding of teeth. Loss of power and weakness after a period of sexual excess. Tendency to cutaneous, acne or psoriasis.
5. Digestive or Hepatic Troubles
China. Digestive troubles predominant. Flatulence, sour eructations do not ameliorate. Loss of appetite, slow digestion. Liver enlarged and painful. Possibility of ascites. Skin has an extreme sensibility to touch.
Mentally the patient is debilitated, apathetic, taciturn, and sometimes indifferent.
Digitalis. Hepatic and cardiac troubles. Arrythmia with pulse, very often trigeminated, or the heart-beat as well is interrupted after each seven stroke. Tendency to arrythmia and cardiac collapse. Prostration from the least exercise. Liver is large, tendency to icterus, myocardia. Weakness, dilation of heart, auricular fibrillation.
Kali Bichromicum. This remedy suits to alcoholism of beer drinkers, with hepatic and intestinal troubles, gastric dilation, sensation of weight within the stomach, nausea and frequent vomiting. Dysenteric form of diarrhoea.
6. Tendency to Uremia and Apoplexy
Opium. Condition of somnolence or even true coma with dark red appearance of the face, stertorous and snoring respiration, stupor, unconsciousness. Opium absolutely give the picture of a patient “ivre mort”. There exists generally a great analogy between coma and sleepy condition. It is why we naturally prescribe Opium in such a case.
Let us remark that Cahis Bercelona had the good idea of prescribing inversely the dilutions of Ethyl alcohol in apoplexy. He has thus got very remarkable results.
Opium will also naturally suit to apoplectic alcoholic persons in case of the tendency to uremia with somnolence and urinary troubles, tongue always dry and black, pupils lose sense and generally are in a state of myosis.
Cuprum Arsenicum It is also a remedy in convulsive erythema or still in certain cases of acetonemia. Muscular pains are frequent in legs, at night that is why this remedy suits some cases of uremia in alcoholic persons.
The 6th group has only one medicine.
Ranunculus Bulbosus. This remedy suits mostly in hydrogenoid persons who have some neuralgias mostly in the level of thorax and may affect not only the thoracic wall but the pleura also. Pleurodynia, pleuritis or even pleurisy with intercostal neuralgias are very steadily controlled by this remedy, mostly if the subject is an alcoholic.
Pains have a burning and pinching character and are worst by contact.
They are very often accompanied with icterus or with herpetic vesicular eruptions.
We must not forget that Ranunculus is also a good remedy of zona. It may also act in delirium tremens as there exists spasmodic hiccough in alcoholic persons or still more in an inveterate sciatica. The patient suffers from cold, moisture, just as is the case with all hydrogenoid patients.
This remedy follows Sulphur very often but this view will not tally with the views of some authors though I hold it.
Before ending let us repeat here a very judicious remark that has been made by Hering. Persons who drink wine often has a habit to take coffee, as those who prefer beer often takes tea. According to Hering they would have instinctively a reaction of the defence of the organism because coffee seems to antidote the bad effects of wine and tea does so in the troubles caused by beer and inversely.
For the coffee drinkers: Nux vomica, Ignatia and Chamomilla.
For tea drinkers: Thuja, Ignatia, Selenium.
For the drinkers of wine and alcohol: Nux-vomica.
For beer drinkers: Kali bichromicum and Aloe.
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.