Thus, for example, we should know that a Sepia patient having, at the age of 30 years, has passed formerly at the age of two or three, through the stage of Calcarea fluorica, followed at the age of ten by the stage of Natrum muriaticum which was at the age of 18 years followed by the stage of Pulsatilla and after several pregnancies which caused portal hypertension and ptosis, and atony of the different small organs of the lower abdomen, she has come into the stage of Sepia. But she will not remain a patient of Sepia. She may move towards Lachesis, Phosphorus, Lycopodium and we should know exactly to which one she is moving. The knowledge of the series of remedies makes the Homoeopaths uncontestably superior who know the Law of Equilibrium and its corollary the Laws of Compensation. In fact, a patient who is not treated may remain, for some years, suitable to a single remedy, so long as it is possible to maintain more or less stable equilibrium of the organism. At a given time that equilibrium will be broken and he will pass to another remedy. It is thus that one may understand the series of remedies according to the age, sex and the living conditions of the patient.
5. The Law of the Least Effort and the Drainage:
We have also studied formerly the physical law of the least effort or the law of inertia. It has helped us to understand how the nature should be guided towards the obligation of the reaction. The law of the least effort guides us to the limits of Homoeopathy. When Homoeopathy is no more applicable, it should leave its place to surgery and to other therapeutic methods. It is often by the application of drainage and of canalisation that we may let the patient pass from one method of therapeutics to another, without any inconvenience for him.
6. The Principle of Polarity and Drainage :
We should know this law in relation to the principle of drainage and canalisation. It is in fact necessary to consider the organism as formed of multiple to consider the organism as formed of multiple poles which may react one upon the other. It is thus one will be brought, in some cases, to some rational practice such as centrotherapy or other methods of reflexotherapy. But even in Homoeopathy when one wishes to treat a patient one should know the action of an infinitesimal dose in time and space. In space the group of remedies are generally remedies of high dilution that have a triple character : medicine of universal action, polycrest and long-ranger remedies.
The satellites that we give generally in lower dilutions or medium dilutions are localisers : they have a local elective action.
But we should consider this classification with an open mind. A medicine which generally acts as ground remedy, Thuja for example, may sometimes in some cases be a satellite or localiser of another remedy (Sulphur or sometimes of Arsenic). In such a case we may say that this ground remedy has become the canaliser of another remedy.
When we consider this principle of polarity, we should first of all study the laterality and know the action on the left side or on the right side of the body of all our remedies.
Then we should know the principal poles of reaction. We will take into consideration for example the action of some remedies having elective action on the liver and on the right eye; others that act on the cardiac region and on the lift peri-orbital region etc…
The poles may sometimes be multiple and in such a case we may select remedies acting simultaneously or successively on the different poles.
7. The Principle of Metastases and Drainage :
It is specially by the help of the idea of the metastases and of transfers of morbid energy that we may better understand the necessity of drainage directed according to the principle of the degradation of morbid energies.
We should know well that there often exists an antagonism between the organism considered from the general point of view and the local regions. There may exist a real opposition which may even have created the lesion, sometime together with functional and organic troubles in a given syndrome. When an organism cannot completely degrade its morbid energies after the first phase of functional troubles it causes a fire in the form of a lesion, and when the lesion is formed, there results at least temporarily in metastases and transfer of morbid energies.
In other cases when there does not still exist a lesion or that it is late to come, any kind of treatment may apparently give some results. The doctor generally believes to have cured, while he has only displaced the energy and it is the history of those patients who go from one specialist to another for being treated successively for such and such anatomical regions as some detached parts.
A cauterisation will cure rhinitis, but will cause to appear a more or less excoriating leucorrhoea for which the patient will go to consult a gynaecologist after the laryngologist.
This is often seen in practice and it should lead us to humility and prudence in our affirmations of cure. In order to understand the metastases and the transfer of morbid energies that may exist alone or under the influence of any treatment, it is necessary to study in a complete and analytical manner the elective action of each of the remedies on such and such region and on such and such tissue. It is only thus that we will be able to understand the canalisation of toxins and the canalising effects of the remedies, and these two phenomena may be studied parallelly.
When we give a principal remedy and a satellite remedy we should ask ourselves whether the satellite precedes or follows the ground remedy. If it precedes the ground remedy it canalises the action of the ground remedy as for example Nux vomica, canaliser of Sulphur on the small intestines; Aloe, a canaliser of Sulphur on the rectum etc. In this case it is said that Sulphur is the complementary of Nux vomica or Aloe.
If, on the contrary, the satellite follows the ground remedy we may recommend to a less experienced Homoeopath or to a beginner to use rather the canaliser before the canalised remedies to avoid medicinal aggravations.
The law of equilibrium also teaches us that the morbid energies should be degraded successively, progressively and by stages. In difficult cases we should treat the patient by stages. This is important. When you have in your chamber a case which embarrasses you greatly, and when the patient presents, on the same organic sphere, symptoms indicating numerous remedies, it is necessary, that you should hierarchise these symptoms in order to know what is the similimum and how you should give these remedies.
We have, as for example, a complex case that shows at the same time the symptoms of Aconite, Belladonna, Calcarea carb, Pulsatilla, Nux vomica, Lycopodium, Sulphur and Lachesis. This may happen more often than one believes. How should we treat such a case. In the first phase we may treat him with Sulphur 200, followed by Aconite 30 and Glonoin 30. Then, acting thus in a general way on the troubles caused by arterial hypertension we should treat the endocrinal troubles by Lachesis followed by the same satellite remedies. Then will come the indication of Lycopodium followed by Nux vomica and Kali bichromicum for hepato intestinal troubles and finally will come the stage of Calcarea carbonica in high dilutions, which we should precede or follow by Pulsatilla.
Here is an example in which is necessary some treatment by stages according to the successive steps in order to help the patient to go back the way which he has previously crossed, in order to arrive at the stage that Mure (Benoit) indicated to us in the form of a well-known law.
If the patient has taken ten years to arrive successively, by a more and more accentuated morbid syndrome, at the stage for which he has come to consult, he should do again in six or eight months a sketch of the way he has crossed, in which we may note that the two first months correspond to the symptoms of the two or three last years, etc. He will have even the silent intervals that he had during his long continued disease.
8. The Mode of Action of Remedies. Cohesion, Purification. Phenomenon of Shock and Counter-Shock:
If we continue to study the law of equilibrium from another point of view, we will arrive at the conception of the mode of action of the remedies, which may be, according to the cases, centripetal or centrifugal. We have already given some examples regarding the mode of action of the remedies. We have always checked the centrifugal action of Sulphur by the centripetal action of China. This is also an important point as regards the clear understanding of drainage.
We must not like some Homoeopaths, use that term haphazardly and think that when we treat a certain patient, we only drain him. Adding of new substances is generally more important from the quantitative point of view than the elimination of toxins, of which the proof is that when a patient is treated homoeopathically during a long continued disease, the patient gains weight under the influence of the treatment. All chronic patients are demineralised patients. They have lost the mineral contents of the organism and also have lost the heat or the vital force. It is necessary to repair in the organism what is destroyed and to neutralise or eliminate toxins. It is easy to understand that the centripetal or centrifugal actions of homoeopathic remedies should be well known in order to avoid dangerous aggravations. To give a high dilution of Sulphur to an oxygenoid, tubercular patient who has its symptoms may be dangerous. Of course it is true that one thus neutralises the toxins, one eliminates the toxins, but one augments the demineralisation and the patient loses weight.
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.