Almost all homoeopaths have a tendency to prescribe for a long time the same remedy in spite of the amelioration obtained. We have tried much to fight against this habit. We may have to deal with an acute or a chronic case. We treat it for a given period and it is very difficult for us to tell the patient when he will begin to have amelioration. It is also necessary to lengthen the interval between the doses and to stop it totally when there is complete amelioration of the symptoms. Thus, if the patient is left alone to his own initiative he may either stop the remedy earlier before the amelioration has become manifest or he may fall in deep uncertainty. On the other hand we must also take care to consolidate the amelioration obtained. But it is necessary as Hahnemann has said, to decrease the frequency of doses as soon as their actions have become evident.
(This is a very delicate point in homoeopathic practice. As a rule we must stop repeating as soon as we have effect from the medicine applied. But how long should we wait for the desired effect? No rule can be laid down in answer to this question. On the one hand, the doctor is not sure whether his medicine is acting or not and on the other hand the patient becomes impatient because you cannot assure him when he is going to have amelioration. This is really a dilemma in homoeopathy. I venture to suggest a method, which I have seen very often useful during my long years of experience. (Repeat the dose in however high dilution it may be at short intervals until its action becomes apparent or give a high dilution and intercalate it with a lower one and stop the medicine as soon as its action is manifest and as long it continues to act. If the amelioration is not complete, repeat in the same way, R.M.)
Only homoeopaths who have very long experience, do not commit such errors (in repetition). We should also try to avoid a second error which will consist in stopping the medicine too soon. We must know to place ourselves on the borderline of these two dangers. To stop the medicine too soon is to cause the patient to fall back on his diseased condition. The first error is generally committed by very pusillanimous patients, while the second, which is generally done by the doctors, is to prescribe the same medicine for a very long time. In most of the patients this kind of continued prescription of the same medicine has practically no ill effects because their sensitiveness is of medium nature. But this kind of prescription has very great importance in hypersensitive patients who are rather exceptional. In such patients, the repetition of doses will cause in them not a stimulation but will bring an extreme depression resulting out of too frequent medicinal excitations. It is the question of rhythm In such cases we cannot fix well the rhythm which suit him. In such cases you may take the help of a method in order to check this medicinal excitation. It is to tell your patient not to take the medicine all the days of a week, to take it as for example for 5 days after an interval of seven, or not to take any medicine at all till the day of his next visit. In this way we may check the medicinal excitation; if not, we have the chance to fall in that extremely disagreeable situation which is as follows: The patient has begun his first prescription; he has great amelioration. He continues his medicines and telephones you that he is going much more worse. Then you change the medicine because you find new symptoms, but the patient goes from bad to worse. If you persist in your error, you give continually some new medicines till one day you stop all remedies and the patient feels immediately better.
Against this danger the Unicists and the adepts of Anglo- American school have found out a system which consists in giving their “Placebo” for “Saccharum Lactis” or “Inertia”. The patient knows not that what he is taking day after day contains no trace of medicine, that it is nothing but sugar of milk. The patient is not told that he is taking only sugar of milk to avoid all auto-suggestions. But in France we have not this habit.
In patients who are not very sensitive when the amelioration is very great and it can no more be increased, the continuation of the treatment does not ameliorate any more, neither it does any harm. The patient who continues the treatment will have no further benefit because he has reached the optimum, but at the same time there will not be any ill-effect. This is what happens at the end of a well-conducted treatment of a chronic disease. But from time to time we have to deal with hypersensitive patients. There hypersensitiveness is so intense that whatever medicine we may apply will cause an aggravation and they do not feel well until all medicines are stopped. Only then they are freed from all medicinal excitations. It is also possible that they may continue to feel well because some medicines taken previously may act at that time in a very delayed way.
We have already seen while speaking about the duration of the action of remedies that we should not repeat a medicine until the previous dose has ceased acting. The superiority of homoeopathy had been established from the very beginning by Hahnemann who had discovered that we are capable of knowing the duration of action of the medicines by diluting and dynamising it. We have thus an immense superiority over the official school. We can measure the duration of the action of our medicines. It is now up to us not to fall in an inverse error of becoming more of a homoeopath than Hahnemann himself and by repeating the medicines very often. We know that in a general way we apply lower dilutions, often in repeated doses in acute cases, while in chronic cases we use, while in chronic cases we use high dilutions repeating very rarely. Naturally it becomes a question of real technique, variable with each patient. We know also that in urgent cases, as for example a case of haemorrhage, we are authorised to repeat our medicines at an interval of five or even three minutes: e.g. China 6, in dangerous epistaxis, or Silicea or Naja in metrorrhagia should be repeated very frequently.
In acute case we know also that the 3rd and the 6th dilutions are applied every hour every two hours or every three hours. But let us remember always,.
1. That we must avoid repeating a medicine for a long time when the amelioration is apparent and consolidated. But let us also remember at the same time that we should not stop the medicine until the amelioration is really consolidated.
2. That we must avoid repeating a medicine until it has completed its action.
As the evolution is much more rapid in acute cases, the homoeopaths in general and the beginners in particular may commit the error of repeating the remedies too long a time. When you treat cases of whooping cough, measles, mumps or bronchitis, when the symptoms are yielding, the temperature is falling down, you will know well that the medicine is to be stopped. It is in chronic cases where amelioration is often insidious, when it is feared that the patient may fall back it is quite possible to make the error of continuing the prescription for a long time. MEDICINAL AGGRAVATION
A second important point is this: How to check the aggravation from the high dilutions?
All the medicines may be prescribed in high dilutions without danger but on the condition that we know how to administer them. The beginners in homoeopathy are according to their temperament divided into two groups: the audacious and the timorous. Fortune favours the audacious and they advance very soon but will meet many failures. Professor Marage, who was entrusted with some lectures in the University of Sorbonne, I think took of Homoeopathy though he did not believe in it because a Homoeopathy gave him Sulphur and an eczema appeared on his body. Chavanon took up Homoeopath because he bought a book by Chiron and was terribly aggravated as a consequence of taking different Homoeopathic medicines in frequent intervals.
Before knowing if it is necessary to check the aggravations, it is necessary to put to oneself the following questions: Is it really necessary to check them or not? They are some American and English homoeopaths who systematically look for aggravation. They are satisfied only when they get an aggravation while treating a chronic case.
In think that with the French temperament and character we cannot act in the same way with our patients. On the other I believe that the Latin people who react much sooner to remedies than Anglo-Saxons tolerate much less well the aggravations and are not at all made to note down regularly their symptoms. A Scotch and a Scandinavian will accept willingly to pass through a a phase of aggravation that may last long, as for example for the cure of a case of Asthma. A Frenchman will accept it rarely. It is always necessary to take into consideration the desire of the patients because it is they who know what will suit them. So far as we are concerned we follow the teachings of Dr. Nebel who has made researches throughout his practice in order to check the aggravation caused by the high dilutions and from him has generated the idea of applying the antidote to cause a drainage. DRAINAGE
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.