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Sfiie{fieé 'in /
the load ar
Aid & &
Medicine )\
By Dr. John B. Huber.
OLK lore teems with references to
F the poisonous properties of the
toad and 0 the mediciasl value
of those polsons when properly thinned
out or diluted to human uses.
Medica! sclence has just discovered
thet there is truth in these old stories
and that the toad furn'shes a very m
medicine indeed. It comes mainly
the exerescences or warts on ita skin
and it does, in the main, just what folks
Jore said ® would do,
The alchemisis were constantly od
vising dried toad as & remedy for
dropsy, for kidney troubles and for
inflammations—pretty much as we are
now using digitalis for the same all
ments. And thereby hangs anotber tale
which we are presently golag to unfold.
Dried and pulverized toad was used
for nose-bleed, precisely as we are u:
the substance called epinephrine,
for the same purpose. And dried toads
were applied to pestilent bolls and to
the itch. Or a toad ointment was used.
. Here is a prescription for such an oint
ment ip use among our first New Eng
land colonists for spralns and rheum
atism: “Take four good-sized live toads,
put them In bolling water and cook very
soft; then take
them out and
boll the water
down to one-half
pint, and add
freshehurned un
salted butter one
pound, and sim
mer together: at
the last add tinc
ture of arniea,
two ounces.” I
make no doubt
this was an el
fective ointment,
by reason of
the arnica, if not
of the toad infu
sion.
The Chinese
have used senso,
a preparation of
toadskin, from
time immemorial.
This senso is an
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fmpure product
similar in its action to digitalis, but from
fifty to & hundred times more powarful.
In the Middle Ages and up at least to
1700 toads were hung up by the neck in
the alr, and then they were dried and
kept ready for use. One Dr. Etmauller,
who died in 1683, declared that lving
toads aroused to the point of fury are
venomous, but when found dead they are
entirely devold of poison. Transfixed
alive in the month of July—the head
and entrails removed—and then dried
and powdered, toads would cure dropsy
and burning fever at night.
It seems to bave been well realized
{n the past that the toad ejects when
attacked an irritant and yellowish-white
secretion from its skin glande. We all
recall how, when we were small boys,
toads were accused of giving us warts.
This connection is not proved.
The secretion we are considering
would indeed {rritate the naturally
scratched and dirty skin of small boys,
but the toad's producing warts seems
to be a myth arising out of the warty
appearance of the toad's skin. It is, no
doubt, one of those myths arising out
of the mediaeval doctrine of signatures—
which it would certainly interest the
reader to look up in any encyclopedia—
the doctrine by which it was considered
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that plants and animals could transmit
their external pecullarities of formation
or color—could unite those pecularities
on human beings.
We may fairly enough discount also the
claim that toads poison infants by their
breaths; also that if they—toads—are
killed by accident or design cows will
in consequence render bloody milk.
Scientists have from time to time re
jected the pospculu belles that toads are
poisonous. jence is now, however,
concluding that the popular notion s,
on the whole, not without foundation.
Indeed, as early as 1840, Dr. John Davy,
a very much travelled naturalist, inves
tigated some tropical toads that had skin
glands large enough to receive hogs'
bristles. The largest and most numer
ous of these glands were near the shoul
ders and about the creature’s neck.
Davy, by applying pressure to the skin,
found a vellowish, thick fluld to exude
and to spurt occasionally “to a consid
erable distance.” He found this fluid
also in the toad’'s bile and in its saliva.
It was mucilage like, becoming on evap
oration yellowish, with a bitter taste,
and smarting to the skin. Davy found
this rather an acrid than a polsonous
substance, enalogous to that secreted by
the bee and she scorpion, rather than
like the more virulent and lbes acrid
fluld of the poisonous snakes. This sub
stance smeared on the toad's surface
helps to defend it from the attacks of
carnivorous animals. We shall see,
however, that it is far from
altogether effective. Such were
Davy's findings.
The botanist Andre found
also that the Chico Indians in
the primeval forest of New
Granada used the skin secretion
of the spade-footed toad for an
arrow poison. The animal was
placed in e bamboo tube, the
operator’s hands being pro
tected by leaves, and when
some of the poison was desired
the tube containing the toad was
suspended over a fire.
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A Medicinal Toad—Showing the Lesser
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The toad soon became covered with a
yellowish julce, which ‘was allowed to
drop into pots, into which the arrow
tips were dipped. The procedure here
seoms to be akin to that by which sav
ages tip the arrows they use in warfare
in the substance of decaying crabs, a
most deadly and rapidly active poison.
We come now to recent scientific ex
perimentation, that pursued conjoiatly by
Dr. John J. Abel, of Johns Hopkins Uni
versity, and Dr. David 1. Macht. These
very experienced men knew that modern
pharmacology has produced immunizing
and curative antivenine from snakes,
remedies from amphibians, the Japanese
polson fugo from fish, mytilotoxin from
mussels, cantharidin from scorpions,
spiders, bees and beetles; formic acld
from auts, thyroid extract (which is so
valuable in the disease called myx
oedema) from sheeps’ thyroids, and
suprarenal extracts of sheep and oxen
(called also adrenalin, epinephrine and
suprarenalin) from those glands or cap
sules which lle immediately above the
kidneys in mammalians.
In the light of such knowledge Drs.
Abel and Macht experimented on the
Bufo agua, the largest of the anura, the
tailless amphibians. This species of
toad, eight inches long by five broad—
some considerable toad-—is found in
most Central and South American islands
and in the warmer parts of Mexico. The
upper Amazon natives make an arrow
poison from its creamy secretion, by
which big game is killed within a few
minutes.
Dr. Abel's specimens came from Mon
tego Bay, Jamaica. The general color
of this Bufo is light to dark brown, with
sooty patches, and having its back cov
ered with warty growths. There are two
large oval parotids behind each ear,
which on cutting through them look like
honeycomb. We humans also have par
otids, which are, however, in front of and
below the ear. The ducts of our par
otids open into our mouths and their
gecretions helps to form our saliva. It
is the inflammation of these glands
which we call the mumps.
Now, Dr. Abel, in scraping off with a
knife some of the secretion of the Bufan
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A Dried Toad Skin—The Chinese Have Used
These for Centuries as Medicine for
Dropsical Affegtipqs.
Copyright, 1916, by the Star Company. Great Britain Rights Reserved.
parotids, was struck by the bluish-green
discoloration that appeared on his blade.
He remembered that he had once seen
this color years before on a scalpel
which he had used in cutting into the
suprarenal gland of a mammalian. This
observation led him to testing some of
the Bufan secretion with ferric chloride,
the result being that he got first a beau
tiful emeraldgreen color, which pres
ently became purple and then pink. And
this is precisely what will happen It
you test in the same way the active
secretion of the suprarena! gland of the
sheep or the ox.
This led Dr. Abel to make further tests
with the object of identifying this toad
secretion and to learn if it contained a
substance akin to or closely allied with
the suprarenal principle. And these
similarities were established. Further
tests proved, moreover, that this secre
tion of Bufo agua contains also a second
substance, identical with principles be
;onglng to the digitalls group of med
cines.
Besides the Bufo’s parotids Dr. Abel
found also other glands all over the
surface of the skin. These were of the
mucous variety, such as line, for ex
ample, the inside of our noses. When
Bufo was irritated by mechanical, chem
fcal or electric means its skin exuded
a creamy secretion having a pungent
odor, and when very roughly handled
it squirted this secretion from the paro
tids also. Dr. Abel found this to dry
{n the air, forming hard, brittle, yellow
scales that appeared much like dried
snake venom.
When these air-dried cells were
brought into contact with water they
swelled up to a gelatinous consistency,
became opalescent and formed a neutral
—that is, neither acid nor alkaline—
foamy emulsion of a most nauseating
bitter taste and pungent odor. A little
of this emulsified secretion, well diluted
and injected into the eye of a dog or a
cat constricted the blood vessels and
blanched the conjunctiva—which is pre
cisely what follows the application of
epinephrine.
A little of this emulsified secretion in
jected into the abdomen of a pithed frog
caused slowing of its heart, while the in
jection of a great deal—of an overdose—
caused the heart to stop beating, which
Newest Discoveries Prove
. Toads DON’T Cause
' Warts, DON’T
Affect Cow’s Milk,
N DON’T Poison
%‘“g Babies with
=24 Their Breath,
are precisely the effects that digitalis
(popularly known as foxglove) produces.
From this Bufan secretion, them, Dr.
Abel jsolated®the blood-pressure-raising
epinephrine. This epinephrine or adren
alin can be synthetized also in the lab
oratory from coaltar products, under
the name of hydrox-methyl-amino-ethyl
benzene. And the beautiful crystalline
substance which Dr. Abel isolated from
the secretion of Bufo agua and to which
toad skin owes its curative and digitalis
like power over kidney diseases and
dropsy, he called Bufagin. He found slso
a like substance in the skin of the com
mon toad; and this he called Bafotalin.
Thus are the old wives’ remedies of
our ancestors justified in twentieth cen
tury science.
The marked action of Bufagin on the
heart and on the muscular tissue of the
blood vessels, classes this drug with the
most efficient of the digitalis series of
drugs. Nor does Bufagin—and this is a
very important consideration—have the
cumulative effect which makes the con
tinuous administration of digitalis dan
gerous. Besides, Bufagin has unusual
keeping powers—a great desideratum
when we reflect that there is at least one
drug house in the metropolis which
makes its digitalis infusion fresh dalily,
and at night sends to hospitals what it
has not, during the day, dispensed to its
patrons. Besides, Bufagin is chemiocally
pure and lends itself
particularly well to
exact dosage.
And in accord with
the inexorable law
of nature, so well,
though profanely, ex
pressed in the popu
lar sentimeni that
life is after all just
one thing after an
other the toad it- ¢
self gets eaten—by
hawks, marshhawks,
owls, crows, snakes
and skunks; while
hens, ducks, geese
and guinea fowl
feed on the innocent
young toads as they
migrate from their
breeding places and
their tiny nurseries.
True nature has sup
plied the toad with
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A Medicinal Toad Singing a Love
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THE TOAD AND ITS
. MEDICINE CHEST.
- A Picture of a Giant Trop:-
te cal Toad Showing the Skin
& R “Warts"” that Contain Use
&‘-, ful Drugs. The Section Un-
P .T p » der the Magnifying Glass
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T W That Take from the Toad's
rad b Blood the Medicinal Sub
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2 '4, ' Skin Excrescences Which
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its squirts and with the skin glands that
exude mucus, the secretion which
spreads over their skins when they are
attacked, just as nature supplies pretty
much every created thing with some
more or less effective weapon by which
to guard itself against its would-be prey
ing enemies in the universal struggle for
existence.
Why, then, don't those hawke and the
rest succumb, in devouring the toad, to
its epinephrine, its Bufagin, its Bufo
talin? No doubt because in the course
of age-long toad meals those epicures
have got themselves immunized against
the poisonous properties, pretty much as
the anclent l?onhn King Mithridates
made himself immune to snake poisons
by taking at first infinitesimal and then
gradually increasing doses of venines.
Also those hawks and the other toad
eaters would no doubt be poisoned if
they got the Bufagin and the rest into
their bodies any other way than by the
stomach. On the same principle we
humans, as apt as not, eat along with
our fried or broiled or boiled chicken any
number of lockjaw germs; but if those
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The Oddest Toad—The Ceratohyla Bubalus,
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A Highly Medicinal Toad, Also Showing Its
Medicine Chest and an Amiable Smile,
germs get into a
cut or bruise in
our skins, then it
{8 very likely in
deed to be the
wooden overcoat
for ours.