What We Must Not Do In Homoeopathy – 2


Alone the homoeopaths who have a very long experience, do not make such an error regarding the dose. We try first of all to avoid a second error which will consist in stopping the medicine very 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 in his diseased condition.


Translated By Dr. Rajkumar Mukerji M.A., L.H.M.S. [Continued from page 80]

(This is very delicate point in Homoeopathic practice. As a rule we may say that we must not repeat as soon as we have an effect of 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 in doubt whether his medicine is acting or not and on the other hand the patient becomes impatient because you can not assure him when he is going to have amelioration. This is really a dilemma in Homoeopathy.

A suggestion, which I have seen very often useful during my long years of experience may be given here. Repeat the dose of 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 you have its action and so long it continues. If the amelioration is not complete repeat in the same way).

Alone the homoeopaths who have a very long experience, do not make such an error regarding the dose. We try first of all to avoid a second error which will consist in stopping the medicine very 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 in his diseased condition. This error is generally done by very pusillanimous patients. The error that 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 importance because their sensitiveness in of medium nature. But this kind of prescription has a very great importance in hypersensitive patients who are besides exceptional. In such patients the sensitiveness is so great that the repetition of doses will cause in them not an intoxication but will bring an extreme depression resulting out of too frequent medicinal excitations. IT IS A CASE OF RYTHYM. In such cases we cannot fix well the rythym which suits 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: 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 will 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 “Place” or “Saccharum Lactis or “Inertia”. The patient knows not 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 only to avoid all auto-suggestion.

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 does it make any harm. The patient who continues the treatment will have no further benefit but at the same time there will not be any bad effect. This is what happens at the end of a well conducted treatment of chronic disease.

But from time to time we have to deal with hypersensitive patients. His hypersensitiveness is so intense that whatever medicine we apply to him it will cause an aggravation and he will not feel well until all medicines are stopped. Only then he is put at rest from all medicinal excitations. It is also possible that he may continue to feel well because some medicines taken previously may act at that time very slowly.

We have already seen while speaking about the duration of the action of remedies THAT WE SHOULD NOT REPEAT A MEDICINE UNTIL IT 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 medicine.

It is now up to us not to fall in an inverse error becoming more Homoeopath than Hahnemann himself and by repeating the medicines very often. We know that generally we apply lower dilutions, often in repeated doses in acute cases and that in chronic cases we use high dilutions repeating very rarely. Naturally it becomes a question of real technique, variable according to each patient. We know also that in urgent cases as for example a case of Haemorrhage, we are authorised to repeat our medicines every five or three minutes interval: China 6 in dangerous epistaxis, 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 for a long time a medicine when the amelioration is apparent and consolidated, But let us also remember at the sametime that we must 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 evolution is much more rapid in acute cases, the homoeopaths in general and the beginner in particular commit the error of repeating the medicine for too long time. When you treat cases of Whooping cough, Measles, Mumps or Bronchitis, you make neither an error of repetition nor of dose. 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 again, it is quite possible to make an error of continuing the prescription for a long time.

A second important point in this: How to check the aggravation from the high dilutions?

All the medicines may be manipulated in high dilutions without danger but on the condition that we know how to use them. The beginners in Homoeopathy are, according to their treatment divided into two groups. The audacious and the timorous. Fortune favours the audacious. They will advance very soon but will meet many failures.

Before knowing if it is necessary to check the aggravations it is necessary to ask oneself the following question: Is it necessary to check them or not? There are some American and English Homoeopaths who systematically look for an aggravation. They are satisfied only when they get an aggravation while treating a chronic case.

But we Homoeopaths of France, we cannot act in such a way on our patient.

It is always necessary to take into consideration the desire of the patient because it is they who feel 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 it is from him has generated the idea of applying the antidote to cause a drainage. [*Drainage is nothing but the art of toning up a diseased organ before applying a deep acting remedy as for example. Chelidonium 1x before Lycopodium; Puls. 6 before Tuberculines.]

You know that in the Materia Medica we have some short lists of medicines which are called antidotes of some other medicines. In fact they are not the antidotes of medicines considered toxic. Nebel, by antidotes, understands that the medicines called antidotes are complementary and satellites. Thus when Pulsatilla is indicated as antidote of Nux Vomica, it means that when Nux Vomica will finish acting it is necessary to apply Pulsatilla. Therefore in the place of “Antidote” it is better to use the word “Satellite” or “Complementary” and by so doing we will know to check the aggravation of such and such medicine.

In this way Nebel has come to drainage. He began to observe in tuberculous patients that the most indicated remedy aggravates and the aggravation may not be dangerous for a patient who defends well or who has become ill very recently, but it may be terrible in patients in whom cavities are already formed. His first research was carried on, on the aggravation caused by Calcarea Carbonica in high dilutions. We have, therefore, continued like him to try to check aggravation by the high dilutions.

We have several means to check the aggravation. The first means is that of Dr. Nebel, afterwards taken up by Dr. Chiron. Chiron systematically drains during eight days i.e. to say he does not give high dilutions when he sees the patient. He gives him first of all some drops or some globules of a functional remedy. The medicine for the constitution is applied after a week.

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.