Medicine Aggravation


Medicine Aggravation in Homeeopathy explained by Dr. Fortier Bernoville in his book WHAT WE MUST NOT DO IN HOMOEOPATHY….


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.

The aggravation which lasts for a long time after taking a high dilution does not become dangerous if -the medicines are repeated in frequently. Whenever you have such an aggravation, you should increase the interval of the following doses and the patient will become normal.

We are now going to study the nature of some particular remedies.

Sulphur : This is a remedy easy to understand. It is the back bone of our materia medica. It acts in acute as well as in chronic cases. It has the characteristic of being on the borderline of the acuteness and chronicity. We give it at the end of an acute case or in the beginning of a chronic case, sometimes also in the beginning of an acute case when the patient falls back from a chronic state which had existed before.

The aggravation of Sulphur, we may say, is much more dramatic and evident than dangerous or hidden. For example, when this remedy causes an eczema to appear or aggravates an eczema which already existed, the aggravation is not dangerous because soon everything will become normal. In these cases do not apply higher than 30. And when a very high dilution, 200 or M, has caused an aggravation come down to 30 and repeat it rarely.

In arterial hypertension, Sulphur in dilution is sometimes dangerous in oxygenoid and lean types and in young patients. But in these cases there is also the question of dilution.

There are two cases where Sulphur may really be dangerous and where one can really made an error in not giving in proper time : 1. In Phthisis, Sulphur should never be given higher than 30 and 2. In suppurative patients this medicine should rarely be repeated.

Last of all, Sulphur should not be trusted in otitis in children. Sulphur is a medicine whose action is like fire and which aggravates the disease. It is a remedy which serves the interest of the organism and disserves the local interest. Therefore in children suffering from adenoids, even if the nose alone is affected, Sulphur 30 may, acting well on the general health, be dangerous because it will cause an otitis to appear. Chavanon goes still further and says that Sulphur should be totally avoided in Children.

I think that if the nose is well disinfected and the application of Sulphur becomes necessary, it should be applied when it is indicated in children.

Generally if you wish to avoid aggravation do not apply on principle more than 30, and in cases of suppurations and phthisis do not even use 30.

Phosphorus. This remedy is to be avoided in some rare cases. First of all we must avoid it in pulmonary or laryngial tuberculosis.

In certain cases of asthma with undiagnosed tuberculosis, Phosphorus 30 may be indicated but it should be used very prudently.

On the contrary, Phosphorus is very useful in hepatic cases, and in cases of cholecystitis where Phosphorus 200 and M should be applied. In these cases this remedy is absolutely harmless. It may only cause a temporary aggravation but not very dangerous.

The aggravation in tuberculosis by Phosphorus was a very disputed question. The homoeopaths who really disputed over its action are those who have had the chance of using this medicine twice or thrice in 200 in pulmonary tuberculosis and confronted no aggravation. But they change their opinion when they are confronted with an aggravation. There are a number of homoeopaths who have seen their patients die rapidly with an extremely rapid caseation, after a dose of Phosphorus 200. When there is pneumothorax the effects of Phosphorus are not dangerous, but it must be said that the aggravation of Phosphorus is dangerous in pulmonary tuberculosis with caseation.

Chavanon got an amelioration with Phosphorus 30 in a patient suffering from laryngial tuberculosis. Phosphorus acted in that case because the patient defended well, but it is an exceptional case.

Silicea : This remedy follows almost the same rule as Sulphur i.e., to say in all cases of pulmonary tuberculosis or when the patient has a tendency to suppurations, it should not be applied in high dilutions.

On the contrary when there is no tuberculosis, but you find sclerosis and septic tumors, you will not get any effect if you do not use Silicea in high dilutions.

Silicea, Aurum muriaticum natronatrum and Calcarea fluorica are in my opinion the trio for uterine fibroma, to which are added Thuya, Lachesis and other auto-inflammatory remedies. In this case Silicea acts in 1000 like a ground remedy with Calcarea fluorica 1000 and Aurum muriaticum natronatrum which we apply in 6x. This last medicine acts remarkably well in 6x dilution.

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.