Bufo rana
Bufo bufo (common toad) skin secretion · Common toad, Brazilian toad. · Animal
Those prone to immature, childish behavior respond best to this remedy. They have a tendency to be emotionally underdeveloped or potentially even educationally subnormal but may be brilliant in one subject (idiot savant). Their faces may be characterized by a stupid and besotted expression. Particularly thick lips, which they may lick constantly, are another classic feature. The classic Bufo symptom picture is of seizures and skin problems, occurring either concurrently or independently, and possibly with excessive sexual activity. Typical skin symptoms include blisters and itching, burning pustules. The sexual element of this remedy involves symptoms such as an extremely high sex drive, frequent masturbation, poorly developed sexual relationships, and even sexual depravity.
Key symptoms
- Epileptic convulsions occurring during sleep at night
- Feeble-minded children; prematurely senile
- Desire for solitude; imbecile mentality; propensity to bite
- Sexual sphere derangements linked to epileptic symptoms
- Menses too early and copious with clots and bloody discharge
- Music is unbearable; every little noise distresses
- Arouses lowest passions; causes desire for intoxicating drink
- Lymphangitis of septic origin; injuries to fingers with streaking pains
Worse (aggravation)
Better (amelioration)
Poison of the Toad (BUFO)
Acts on the nervous system and skin. Uterine symptoms marked. Lymphangitis of septic origin. Symptoms of paralysis agitans. Striking rheumatic symptoms.
Arouses the lowest passions. Causes a desire for intoxicating drink, and produces impotence.
Of use in feeble-minded children. Prematurely senile. Epileptic symptoms. Convulsive seizures occur during sleep at night. More or less connected with derangements of the sexual sphere, seem to come within the range of this remedy. Injuries to fingers; pain runs in streaks up the arms.
Mind
Anxious about health. Sad, restless. Propensity to bite. Howling; impatient; nervous; imbecile. Desire for solitude. Feeble-minded.
Head
Sensation as if hot vapor rose to top of head. Numbness of brain. Face bathed in sweat. Epistaxis with flushed face and pain in forehead, better, nosebleed.
Eyes
Cannot bear sight or brilliant objects. Little blisters form on eye.
Ears
Music is unbearable (Ambra). Every little noise distresses.
Heart
Feels too large. Palpitation. Constriction about heart. Sensation of heart swimming in water.
Female
Menses too early and copious, clots and bloody discharge at other times; watery leucorrhœa. Excitement, with epileptic attacks. Epilepsy at time of menses. Induration in mammary glands. Palliative in cancer of the mammæ. Burning in ovaries and uterus. Ulceration of cervix. Offensive bloody discharge. Pains run into legs. Bloody milk. Milk-leg. Veins swollen. Tumors and polypi of womb.
Male
Involuntary emissions; impotence, discharge too quick, spasms during coition. Buboes. Disposition to handle organs (Hyos; Zinc). Effects of onanism.
Extremities
Pains in loins, numbness of limbs, cramps, staggering gait, feeling as if a peg were driven in joints; swelling of bones.
Skin
Panaritium; pain runs up arm. Patches of skin lose sensation. Pustules, suppuration from every slight injury. Pemphigus. Bullæ which open and leave a raw surface, exuding and ichorous fluid. Blisters on palms and soles. Itching and burning. Carbuncle.
Relationship
Compare: Baryt carb; Asterias; Salamand (Epilepsy and softening of brain).
Antidotes: Laches; Seneg.
Complementary: Salamandra.
Modalities
Worse, in warm room, on awakening. Better, from bathing or cold air; from putting feet in hot water.
Dose
Sixth potency and higher.
The little lands along the back of the toad's neck, when squeezed with forceps, ooze a secretion which is soluble in alcohol and has been proved, this is the subject we will now consider.
Bufo satyhienis is the one I use in practice. Bufo is a wonderful medicine, it profoundly affected the mind and especially the intellectual faculties, including confusion of mind and loss of memory until the patient gradually goes towards a state of imbecility.
The greatest use of this medicine will be found in nervous conditions, throbbings, jerking and spasmodic condition of muscles, ulceration of the skin and mucous membranes, and all this in such patients as are tending towards a state of imbecility, a state of confusion or weakness of mind.
The Toad. (Including the common variety, Bufo rana, and the Brazilian toad, Bufo Sahytiensis, proved by Mure.) N. O. Bufonidæ, Batrachidæ. Solution in rectified spirit of the poison expressed from the cutaneous glands.
Clinical
Brain, softening of. Buboes. Cancer. Carbuncles. Caries. Chorea. Dropsy. Epilepsy. Heart, affections of. Impotence. Intermittents. Malignant pustule. Meningitis. Panaritium. Pemphigus. Phlegmasia alba dolens. Plague. Podagra. Self-abuse. Skin, affections of. Stammering. Suppuration. Whitlow.
Characteristics
In spite of modern scepticism regarding the poisonous properties of the toad, Shakspere, who seems to have known everything, was absolutely correct in speaking of the toad as having "sweltered venom." The poison is excreted by glands in the skin of the back. L. Guthrie (H. W., xxviii. 484) tells a story of an Italian peasant, apparently dying of dropsy, whose wife, weary of the interminable length of his illness, thought to hasten his end by putting a toad into his wine. The result …
Phatak's chapter on Bufo rana is available in the app.
Read Phatak in the appClassical texts are in the public domain. Educational reference only — not medical advice.
