1. Rare cases of complete hypersensitiveness :
There are patients who react in a general way to all medicines and develop some pathogenesis even when rarely repeated doses and lower dilutions of such medicines are applied. There are some patients whose sensitiveness is extreme and there is aggravation by all medicines that they take. It is said that they have become sensitised to all substances, homoeopathic as well as allopathic. It is a kind of general sensitiveness. In such case it is extremely difficult to prescribe for them, and before being placed under Homoeopathic treatment they may require nature cure therapy.
Fortunately, these patients are rare. They are seen one in a thousand. These patients are built up ideally and have controlled pathogenesis. They are very much annoying to treat, but they show us the pathogenesis of our remedies.
To these patients it is necessary to give first of all “Saccharum Lactis” and some inactive globules without telling them that the doses contain no medicine in order to avoid auto- suggestion. Once that hypothesis is eliminated, they should be taken up by very mild physical means. When they cannot tolerate any homoeopathic medicine we should stop all medicines. We should treat them in the method of the naturists. We cannot even apply to them physiotherapy in the form of rays, short waves etc. because they will have aggravations. When we take them up from the point of view of homoeopathy we shall give them in lower dilutions some medicines acting on the mind. One of the best medicines in such case is Ignatia 6, because the 200 and the M give the greatest chance of aggravation. Even Ignatia 6, should be given with care.
I have very often said that it becomes necessary to abandon homoeopathy for treating these patients and to apply to them the methods of naturists. You must be very careful in doing such a treatment. Take a subject who is not very sensitive, put him under a vegetable diet, he will become more and more sensitive. You may eliminate from his food some substances which disagree with him but he will end by showing some real anaphylactic accidents the day he begins to take those substances again. This is due to the sensitivity.
If you are forced, in these rare cases to abandon homoeopathy and to apply nature cure you must not leave your patient for a long time under nature cure but you must very slowly bring him back under homoeopatic treatment giving him for example Ignatia 6 in the middle of a meal thrice daily.
In the same way very mild opotherapy given during meals may give excellent results in hypersensitive patients.
Now we have eliminated that questions: the total sensitiveness of the patients to all remedies, to all medicinal excitations, allopathic, homoeopathic, to gross doses and infinitesimal doses.
It remains for us the question of patients who are aggravated by particular medicines. We will speak specially of polycrests, ground remedies and constitutional remedies.
Hypersensitiveness to such and such particular medicine and medicinal aggravation.
We have said that the unicists look for an aggravation while we try to avoid aggravations by the help of drainage and canalisation. But even after drainage and canalisation there may be aggravation. Of these aggravations we must try to distinguish that which is beneficial : Aggravation which comes immediately after taking the medicine, lasts, for a very short period and is followed by amelioration. For instance, a patient who has taken Sulphur or Natrum sulphuricum may have aggravation for 24 hours and then he begins to feel better on the second and the third day. If the patient is not pusillanimous, and does not abandon his medicine after that aggravation, he will very soon feel the good effects. The effect will continue and he will feel better and better.
But this aggravation, should be checked specially in old patients who cannot tolerate it. There is besides a very characteristic point, viz. that the constitutional remedies do not cause aggravation in children. Aggravation in children is rare. While in adults this aggravations is very frequent, I have not seen even two cases of such aggravation in children in my practice. Young and old patients have very frequent aggravation. In advanced age, especially after 50, these temporary aggravations become more dangerous to tolerate, even though durable amelioration follows :
There is another series of patients, more rare, who react with persistent aggravations, as for example from 8 to 10 or even 15 days after the absorption of a high dilution. They should be treated with still more care. The medicine used should not be repeated; neither the method of Nebel, taken up after wards by Renard should be applied. In a word none of the methods that we have proposed should be applied.
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.