THE VENOMS OF THE TOAD AND 

 SALAMANDER. 



BOTH in ancient and modern times a belief in the 

 venomous nature of the toad and of the salamander 

 has been almost universal, and many passages referring to 

 this are to be met with in the writings of Aristotle (b.c. 

 332) Theophrastus (b.c. 322) Pliny and Dioscorides (a.d. 

 79). Shakespeare also alludes to it in several places, for 

 example, a toad which had " sweltered venom sleeping got " 

 was the first, and hence presumably the most important of 

 the ingredients in the Witches' Cauldron in " Macbeth ". 

 Pliny is especially emphatic with regard to the salamander 

 — ''of all venomous beasts there is none so hurtful and 

 dangerous as the salamander," and he goes on to say that 

 the venom is narcotic and resembles aconite in its action. 

 Until quite recently, if not at the present time, there was a 

 popular idea in the West of England that a dog which 

 worried a toad became mad. 



The toad formerly had a place in the materia medica — 

 in Spielman's Iiistitutiones MateiHce MediccE (a.d. 1784) 

 two preparations are mentioned, " bufones exsiccati," dried 

 toads, and " cineres bufonum," ashes of toads, the former 

 being described as useful in bleeding from the nose and the 

 latter in dropsy. The employment of preparations of the 

 toad as remedies for dropsy is not so absurd as may at first 

 appear, for it will be seen later that a substance is secreted 

 by the skin very like digitalin, and hence possibly having a 

 favourable effect in cases of cardiac dropsy. 



Fact is often as strange as if not stranger than fiction, 

 and the result of a number of investigations will be found to 

 confirm the traditions mentioned above, much as they have 

 been derided. If a toad {^Bufo vulgaris) or a salamander 

 {Salamandra inaatlosa) be examined, it will be found that 

 the dorsal region and limbs are studded with numerous 

 warty prominences, and in the toad there is also a large 

 elongated gland on either side of the neck which has been 



