338 



HISTORY OF FROGS, LIZARDS, AND SERPENTS. 



this is in a letter to the bishop of Carlisle 

 from Dr Pitfield, who was the first person of 

 consequence that attended the experiment. 

 His letter is as follows : 



" Your lordship must have taken notice of 

 a paragraph in the papers with regard to the 

 application of toads to a cancered breast. A 

 patient of mine has sent to the neighbourhood 

 of Hungerford, and brought down the very 

 woman on whom the cure was done. I have, 

 with all the attention I am capable of, attended 

 the operation for eighteen or twenty days, and 

 am surprised at the phenomenon. I am in no 

 expectation of any great service from the ap- 

 plication ; the age, constitution, and thoroughly 

 cancerous condition, of the person, being un- 

 conquerable barriers to it. How an aliment 

 of that kind, absolutely local, in an otherwise 

 sound habit, and of a likely age, might be 

 relieved, I cannot say. But as to the opera- 

 tion, thus much I can assert, that there is 

 neither pain nor nauseousness in it. The 

 animal is put into a linen bag all but its head, 

 and that is held to the part. It has generally 

 instantly laid hold of the foulest part of the 

 sore, arid sucked with greediness until it 

 dropped off dead. It has frequently happened 

 that the creature has swollen immediately, 

 and from its agonies, appeared to be in great 

 pain. I have weighed them for several days 

 together, before and after the application, and 

 found their increase of weight, in the differ- 

 ent degrees, from a drachm to near an ounce. 

 They frequently sweat exceedingly, and turn 

 quite pale, sometimes they disgorge, recover, 

 and become lively again: I think the whole 

 scene is surprising, and a very remarkable 

 piece of natural history. From the constant 

 inoffensiveness which I have observed in them, 

 I almost question the truth of their poisonous 

 spitting. Many people here expect no great 

 good from the application of toads to cancers ; 

 and where the disorder is not absolutely local, 

 none is to. be expected. When it is seated in 

 any part not to be well come at for extirpa- 

 tion, I think it is hardly to be imagined, but 

 that the having it sucked clean as often as you 

 please, must give great relief. Every body 

 knows that dogs licking of sores cures them ; 

 which is, I suppose, chiefly by keeping them 

 clean. If there be any credit to be given to 

 history, poisons have been sucked out. Pal- 

 lentia vulnera lambit ore venena trahens, are the 

 words of Lucan on the occasion. It the peo- 

 ple to whom these words are applied did their 

 cure by immediately following the injection 

 of the poison, the local confinement of another 

 poison brings the case to a great degree of si- 

 milarity. I hope I have not tired your lord- 

 ship with my long tale : as it is a true one, 

 and, in my apprehension, a curious piece of 

 natural history, I could not forbear communi- 



cating it to you. I own 1 thought the story 

 in the papers to be an invention ; and when I 

 considered the instinctive principle in all ani- 

 mals of self-preservation, I was confirmed in 

 my disbelief; but what I have related I saw; 

 and all theory must yield to fact. It is only 

 the Rubeta, the land-toad, which has the pro- 

 perty of sucking : I cannot find any, the least, 

 mention of the property in any one of the old 

 naturalists. My patient can bear to have 

 but one applied in twenty-four hours. The 

 woman who was cured had them on day and 

 night, without intermission, for five weeks. 

 Their time of hanging at the breast has been 

 from one to six hours." 



Other remarks made upon their method of 

 performing this extraordinary operation are as 

 follow : " Some toads die very soon after they 

 have sucked ; others live about a quarter of 

 an hour, and some much longer. For exam- 

 ple, one that was applied about seven o'clock 

 sucked till ten, and died as soon as it was taken 

 from the breast; another that immediately 

 succeeded continued till three o'clock, but 

 dropped dead from thu wound : each swelled 

 exceedingly, and grew of a pale colour. They 

 do not seem to suck greedily, and often turn 

 their heads away; but during the time of their 

 sucking, they were heard to smack their lips 

 like a young child." * 



From this circumstantial account of the pro- 

 gress of this extraordinary application, one 

 could hardly suppose that any doubt could re- 

 main of the ingenious observer's accuracy ; 

 and yet, from information which I have re- 

 ceived from authority still more respectable, 

 there is much reason, as yet, to suspend our 

 assent. A lady, who was under the care of 

 the present president of the College of Phy- 

 sicians, was induced by her friends to try 

 the experiment ; and as he saw the case was 

 desperate, and that it would quiet her mind as 

 well as theirs, he permitted the trial. Dur- 

 ing the whole continuance of their application, 

 she could never thoroughly perceive that they 

 sucked her ; but that did not prevent their 

 swelling and dying, as in the former instan- 

 ces. Once indeed, she said, she thought that 

 one of them seemed to suck; but the physician, 

 and those who attended, could not perceive 

 any appearance of it. Thus, after all, it is a 

 doubt whether these animals die by the inter- 

 nal or the external application of the cancer- 

 ous poison. 



Of this animal there are several varieties ; 

 such as the water and the land toad, which 

 probably differ only in the ground-colour of 

 their skin. In the first, it is more inclining 

 to ash-colour, with brown spots ; in the other, 

 the colour is brown, approaching to black. 



1 British Zoology, vol. ai. p. 338. 



