“Inside our own bodies, we are outnumbered nine to one”

Introduction

The Bowel Nosodes are a series of homeopathic remedies made from human intestinal flora, developed first by Dr. Edward Bach and continued by John

Patterson and his wife, Elizabeth from 1920 until 1960. These remedies were used chiefly in British Homeopathic practice but after some years of neglect they are gaining more favour, especially now with the issues of allergies and antibiotic damage prevalent in today’s patients. Their field of action is much broader than their name suggests, with indicating symptoms arising from the whole system rather than just the bowel.

Bach discovered that certain non-lactose fermenting bacteria were more prevalent in the stool of sick people than in healthy people. This led him to type these bacteria and investigate their connection with pathology.  Up until this point, these bacteria had been ignored even to the point of being unnamed and generally regarded as harmless.

At the time there was an exponential growth in the investigation of bacteria and their association with disease. It was conventional medicine’s new frontier, pioneered by Pasteur and Koch, much as genetics is today. Homeopathy was in the shadow of the apparent success of the new wonder-drugs, antibiotics so it is no surprise that this influenced Homeopathy which, through Swan, was already making extensive use of nosodes in association with Hahnammanian miasmatic theory. Bach came to identify the bacteria that he had discovered with the Psoric miasm.

John Paterson

Initially, Bach created conventional vaccines from these cultures and administered them to patients. However, after reading The Organon while working at the London Homeopathic Hospital in 1919 as house pathologist and assistant bacteriologist, he was struck by the connections between conventional vaccine theory and the Homeopathic Law of Similars and sought to link the two disciplines.

It was then that he began administering the vaccines as potentised nosodes to his patients orally and over a period of ten years gathered clinical data from 500 cases which he claimed demonstrated a  95% rate of improvement with their use.

In 1928 Bach left London on a quest to discover new natural cures which led him to Mt. Vernon in Oxfordshire and the development of the Bach Flower Remedies. A further innovation in their own right.

John Paterson, who had assisted Bach in his research, continued the work after 1928. He refined the discoveries and their clinical indications, added more remedies, formulated theory and guidelines for using the remedies in practice. He potentised the diplococcic intestinal bacteria, similar in nature to Gonorrhea, associated it with the Sycotic Miasm and successfully used this Sycotic compound to treat the GI’s Gonorrhea during the war. After his death in 1955, his wife Elizabeth continued the work for nine years, collating clinical data, making presentations and writing papers.

Throughout this work, neither Bach nor Paterson saw the bacterium as being the cause of pathology

but rather a concomitant or reflection of it. Paterson saw the bacteria as the scavengers of disease and their presence in the stool as being of constitutional significance. The disordered vital force of the patient alters their susceptibility and the intestinal flora changes in accordance with this. Contrary to the conventional perspective, Paterson regarded large amounts of non-lactose fermenting bacteria in the stool as being a positive, healthy sign that the patient was eliminating them successfully and found that this was the case after the administration of the patient’s constitutional remedy.

Non-lactose fermenting bacteria not are not unequivocally pathological per se, some of which serve useful functions in the breakdown of complex carbohydrates.

They can make a diseased situation worse in that they tend to impair the assimilation of food, acidify the environment of the gut, making it more habitable for parasites and fungi and less so for healthier, more symbiotic bacteria. They also produce more toxic substances as wastes such as Hydrogen Sulphide and histamines and even perforate the gut wall as they proliferate. Insufficient nutrition and assimilation are part of these remedies’ pictures as a result as well as the presence of other parasites such as yeasts and worms.

Lactose fermenting bacteria in the gut, such as
L.acidophilis,

L.casei
and
Bifidobacterium
have a broad spectrum of benefits, which will be outlined in more detail below.

Paterson’s conclusions at the centre of this page, were reached after extensive research into the effects of homeopathic remedies on bowel flora. He noticed that when a patient undergoing treatment was experiencing improvement and felt better in themselves, the amount of pathogenic bacteria yielded in their stool increased.

From the conventional point of view, this meant the patient had a disease and should not be feeling better at all. It contradicted the germ theory of disease espoused by Pasteur and others. Paterson concluded that the germs in the stool were the result of the action of the vital force of the patient as stimulated by the remedy administered. The patient was eliminating harmful germs as part of a curative process as his vital force strengthened.

By this logic, Paterson was able to map out the relationships between the specific non-lactose fermenting bacteria that had increased in the patient’s stool to the remedies that had been administered. In this way, each one of the Bowel Nosodes were assigned associated remedies arising from clinical experience, removing the need for homeopathic practitioners to have the stool samples of their patients examined.

The remedies associated with each bowel nosode are listed with the description of each one of these remedies below.

Case Strategy

Paterson suggested the following indications for the use of the Bowel Nosodes.

1. New Case: For a patient who has not received homeopathic treatment the indicted remedy should be given and not the nosode.Where a tricky choice lies between a number of different remedies and most of those fall within those associated with a Bowel Nosode, the nosode may be given.

2. Old Case:For a patient
   who has undergone homeopathic treatment for a while and is no longer responding satisfactorily, a study can be made of their clinical history and the nosode associated with most of the effective remedies administered may be given. Even if there is no movement in the case after the nosode, the patient’s response to subsequent remedies will be more beneficial.

Warnings

1. Never Mix Bowel Nosodes
2. Don’t repeat a Bowel Nosode within three months
3. Don’t give a Bowel Nosode when the stool count for non-lactose fermenting bacteria is 50% or higher and rising

These are deep-acting remedies that alter the homoeostasis of the patients digestive metabolism, with all that that entails for the assimilation of food, allergic reactions and flow of essential nutrients to the body. A nosode should not be repeated within three months to allow for it to act. If a remedy is necessary give one from the group of medicines associated with the nosode. Similarly, mixing the nosodes can be too much change for the body to handle and may produce severe reactions, particularly when there is challenging pathology present.

In the case where the stool count of non-lactose fermenting bacteria is over 50% and rising, the patient is actually getting better on the existing treatment and no additional remedies are required.

The Remedies

Listed below are descriptions of the major Bowel Nosodes with a mind map and description for each one. The associated polychrests for each nosode are listed on the mind maps.

They are as follows:

1. Morgan Pure
2. Morgan Gaertner
3. Gaertner
4. Proteus
5. Sycotic Co.
6. Dysentry Co.

The “Minor” Bowel Nosodes of B. No 7, No. 10, Faecalis and
Mutable are outside of the remit of this project in this version, being little
prescribed and mostly of historical interest.