Now we should see the errors that we should avoid when treating patients.
While treating this subject we will often be forced to come to some general considerations. The first is the most important. It is that there must be a close relation between the clinic and the therapeutic. We must always keep in mind that in homoeopathy we must make triple diagnosis :
1. Diagnosis of the disease.
2. Diagnosis of the patient.
3. Diagnosis of the remedy or remedies.
If we apply the law of similars directly without taking into consideration the patient on the one hand and the disease on the other, we will end very often only in partial or ephemeral ameliorations. Therefore it is necessary to practise an etiologic therapeutics and this cannot be realised without good diagnosis.
I will speak here only regarding some diseases for which this principle has much more importance.
DISEASES OF THE HEART AND OF THE BLOOD VESSELS
I take for example the diseases of the heart and of the circulatory apparatus in general. The modern methods of investigation, particularly electrocardiogram, may help us in certain cases to eliminate some homoeopathic medicines of which the patients have all the symptoms, but the application of which might be dangerous or useless according to a given diagnosis.
This is true for some cases of myocarditis. You have to deal with a patient who has fever, an intense precordial pain, and a sudden fall of the blood pressure. Before the era of cardiogram, or even when it was not possible to arrive at a proper diagnosis clinically of the infarcts of myocardia, one was tempted to apply homoeopathy to these patients on symptomatic basis, without knowing how they got the lesions, In such cases, one could not get the desired results that are now obtained. We know now that it is necessary to abstain in these cases from the tonicardiacs in high dilutions. We know that if in these cases we apply medicines to act on the fever we shall arrive at nothing, and remedies like, Naja, Bothrops, Arnica, Arsenicum, are specially indicated to us because we have the physiopathologic knowledge of that disease, an idea which we wanted totally until clinically on the one hand and by electro- cardiogram on the other we learn what happens at the moment of a myocardiac infractus.
Therefore in a general way we must keep in mind that the diagnosis of the disease has an importance, and an importance on which one cannot have the slightest doubt, not only from the point of view of the prognosis as it is believed by the unicists, but from the point of view of the therapeutics, because it may have all sorts of extremely important consequences. The kentian homoeopaths have the habit of saying that practice must be based purely on symptoms and that the diagnosis of the disease has no importance for the treatment; and that it is important only from the point of view of prognosis. This idea is absolutely erroneous and we will find other important examples of
it.
TONICARDIACS AND HOMOEOPATHY
Now I must speak on the question of the relation between the toni-cardiacs and symptomatic and etiologic homoeopathic treatment.
This is important as regards asystole. There are cases where we are forced to apply some toni-cardiacs. In a general way we may use them in minimum doses. We agree with the official school in these cases but rather with the minimalists than with the maximalists and by so doing we will have good results keeping a good relation with our therapeutics. Let us not trust Oubain given intravenously repeated daily for ten days, which does not agree well with Homoeopathy. Oubain for example is good for acute heart weakness. It is a marvellous remedy in this case. But in chronic cases this medicine is used in intravenous injections and in repeated doses. I have often observed that it does not succeed well. By this kind of application of medicine, we get only a momentary amelioration after which there is established a kind of obstruction. We may say that the heart having made its last attempt has become completely tired.
In cardiac weakness, Oubain is a marvellous remedy no doubt, but it is a remedy to which one becomes habituated; one cannot make himself free from its power.
Digitalis in massive doses is also extremely dangerous in weakness of the heart. There are cases of suicides caused by taking digitalis. Digitalis causes tachyarythmia.
As regards the toni-cardiacs there is now a tendency to react against their being used for a long time and in massive doses.
They are now replaced by bromohydrates of quinine and also quinidine.
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.