Bufo Rana — Homeopathic Remedy Profile

Bufo rana is prepared from the venom that the common toad secretes from the skin glands of its back. It is an animal remedy of the low ground: sepsis, lymphangitis, breakdown in tissues, and epilepsy whose seizures rise out of sleep and out of the sexual sphere. Classical prescribing sits at 30C and above.

At a Glance

Source and Preparation

The pharmacy is unforgiving. The venom is expressed from the parotoid and dorsal glands of the European common toad, Bufo rana, and provings were also taken of the Brazilian species Bufo satytiensis. The tincture is a real poison. A sixteenth-century compendium, Salmon's Doron Medicon of 1583, commended the "quintessence of toads" as a specific in dropsy on the strength of that toxicity alone. Homeopathic proving and clinical use confirmed the same picture on the diluted scale.

Two registers meet in this name and must not be blurred. The tincture, Ø, is genuinely venomous; dose-based toxicology applies to it, and the old Italian folk story of a dropsical peasant who seemed close to death, whose wife dropped a toad into his wine to hasten his end but who was completely cured instead, rests on a crude dose of exactly the kind reserved for professional hands. Classical prescribing takes place at 30C and above, where no molecule of the venom remains. What acts there is the dynamic preparation, prescribed on the totality of the case. The absence of molecules at potency accounts for why crude toxicity does not apply. It is never an account of how the remedy acts.

The Essence of Bufo

The ground of the remedy is decomposition — of tissue, of mind, of moral tone. It is a low state: tissues break down into pus and sepsis; cancer reaches its late stages; the skin is greasy and the discharges and odors are foul. The mental picture sits on the same axis. Confused and forgetful to the edge of imbecility, the patient is senile before his time. The body grows and the mind remains childish. Feeble-minded children who titter and talk nonsense, then flare into anger when they are not understood. Nervousness and trembling on going into the open air. Music intolerable. Every slight noise a distress.

The sexual sphere is inseparable from the seizure. Epileptic attacks come at night, out of sleep, connected with the sexual sphere. They occur when menses arrive in the woman and when desire is aroused in the young man. Onanism in adolescence is a known cause. The patient falls with a blood-curdling scream, mouth held wide open, tongue lapping and playing between the teeth, eyes rolled up and to the left, and wakes — if he wakes — with a violent headache. Boericke recorded the "desire for solitude" whose real motive, once said, cannot be unsaid: the solitude is sought to masturbate. That is why the same patient longs for solitude and dreads being alone. Rage while alone. A propensity to bite. Between convulsions, stupefaction; after them, unconsciousness.

The self-expressions of the organism in Bufo are the septic streak running up an arm from a blackened fingertip, the fetid discharge from an ulcerating breast, the coma between convulsions, the lapping tongue, the pillow that hurts the occiput, and the panting breath of a patient who cannot lie down.

Clinical Portrait

Mind and Temperament

Weakness of memory approaches idiocy. Children remain childish while the body grows. Feeble-mindedness with a silly, tittering affect; nonsense followed by anger when understanding fails. Anxiety about health. Fear of animals, of strangers, and — a small, unmistakable rubric — fear of mirrors in the room. Biting of the nails. Sadness on waking. Irritability in the morning on waking and again at night on retiring. Ill-humor after menses. Laughs and cries by turns. Walks the floor wringing the hands. Deceitfulness. Music, which quiets so many remedies, torments this one. Light does the same. Extreme sensitivity to both is characteristic.

Head and Vertigo

Congestive headaches with flushed face. The pillow hurts the occiput. Pressure as of two iron hands holding the temples. One-sided headaches worse from light and noise. Numbness of the brain precedes the attack; the head is pulled sideways first and then backwards. A violent rush of blood to the head. Profuse oily sweat on head and face. The hair falls. Vertigo as if the house were turned upside down, or as if the patient were floating or swimming in air or water; a drunken feeling after dinner. An older casebook records a cure, with Bufo cinereus, of a nosebleed that had recurred daily for several weeks: the face was flushed, the forehead hot and painful but relieved by the bleeding, and the patient perspired easily and offensively, most of all on the feet. The note that raises Bufo above the general run of congestive remedies is that specific one: better by the bleeding.

Female Sphere

Menses too early, too copious. Headache with the menses; menstrual pains that run into the legs. Offensive, bloody clotted discharge. Watery or purulent, offensive leukorrhea. Ovaries and uterus burn and swell, with sharp pain. Ulceration of the cervix with burning. Polyps and tumors of the uterus. Milk-leg — phlegmasia alba dolens — the swelling running like a cord from groin to knee, the veins swollen. Cancer of the uterus. Sexual excitement precipitating the epileptic attack. In the puerperium, hematuria. Mastitis with bloody oozing from the nipples, bloody milk, induration of the breast glands, and violent pain in the breasts worse at night. In late disease, the offensive bloody discharge of breast cancer is part of the same picture; against it, Clarke, working with hopeless cases, removed the fetor with this remedy.

Male Sphere

Buboes. Disposition to fondle the organ. A tendency to masturbate, and the after-effects of onanism. Emissions occur involuntarily. Impotence, with ejaculation too quick. Semen passes with no pleasure, at times accompanied by cramps or a painful heaviness of the limbs. Spasms during sex. Bufo produces impotence at crude dose — Brazilian folk practice is said to have exploited exactly this property — and cures its deranged forms at potency.

Skin, Suppuration and Lymphangitis

Itching and burning. Patches of skin that lose sensation: anesthetic spots. Pustules and suppuration from every slight injury. Tetters and small nodules. Pemphigus. Yellow bullae, corrosive fluid oozing. Blisters annually on the hands, or on the palms and soles. Large blisters, yellow in colour. Carbuncles, including the epidemic and infectious sort. Anthrax. Chilblains. Yellowness of skin. Above all, lymphangitis with red streaks under the skin — the septic red line that runs up an arm from an infected finger. Panaritium, the whitlow, with blue-black swelling around the nail and pain running in streaks up the arm. Fingers injured and blackened are Bufo's ground. Local infection has escaped containment and the lymphatic corridor is carrying it upstream. This is the point at which the organism is met.

Chest, Cough and Heart

The chest and heart feel as if squeezed tight. A fiery burning in the chest. Rapid motion of the diaphragm. A suffocative cough triggered by any emotion, or by burning or stitches in the larynx, or towards three or four in the morning by a tickling felt only at that hour. Cough from cold feet. Violent cough with vomiting. Dry cough with sharp pain or burning. Difficult breathing from compression of larynx and trachea; the patient must sit up or bend forward. Short of breath, the patient pants like a dog. The expectoration, mucous or bloody, comes up mostly morning and evening, with a feeling of cold in the chest.

The heart feels too large. Heaviness about the heart. Palpitations come on waking, after eating, with nausea, and with headache during menses. The heart feels as though it floats in water or in air. Stitching pain around the apex. Rapid heart action in exophthalmos. As the epileptic attacks multiply the pulse grows more rapid and more threadlike. Paralysis of the heart is the endpoint.

Digestion and Rectum

Burning in the mouth as from acid, worse from cold water. Blood in the saliva. The lips are licked constantly. Fetid odor from the mouth. Stuttering and stammering, with anger when not understood. Milk and smoking both bring on colicky pain. Violent colic, the jaws and limbs jerking convulsively. A sensation as of cold balls running through the bowels. Weak, faint feeling in the stomach. Belching like rotten eggs. Nervous excitement brings nausea and vomiting. Drinking is followed by vomiting; the vomit holds yellow fluid, and blood and bile are vomited too. Enlargement of the liver with pulsating pain like an abscess. Dysentery with delirium, headache and sleeplessness. Torpid bowels. Ascarides. Hemorrhoids with bright red blood. Stools white. Hard stool, passed with difficulty, the body cold and the head hot.

Fever, Sleep and Perspiration

Coldness and shivering, with moist skin and trembling, worse going into the open air. During fever the patient is apathetic or delirious and the feet are cold. Burning heat in different parts of the body. Marked periodicity — quartan fever. Profuse oily sweat on head and face. Sweat during spasms. The hands and arms break into a cold, clammy sweat. Sweats towards morning during sleep. Irresistible sleepiness after eating, after smoking, after being in the open air. Drowsy but cannot sleep, from agitation, turning constantly in bed. Constant yawning. Starting in sleep, waking as if frightened. Coma after spasms. All symptoms worse on waking.

Modalities

Worse:

• warm room
• sexual excitement
• masturbation
• least motion; injury
• on waking
• full moon
• open air (nervousness, trembling, cramps)

Better:

• cool air
• cold bathing
• putting the feet in hot water
• bleeding (nosebleed relieves the head)

Relationships

Antidoted by Lachesis and Senega.

Complementary: Salamandra. In epilepsy and softening of the brain, Amphisbaena is complementary.

Compare:

• Epilepsy and softening of the brain: Baryta carbonica, Asterias, Salamandra. Bar-c. also sits beside it for children whose development is delayed.
• Convulsions from low grades of suppuration: Cubeba.
• Epileptic aura starting in the solar plexus: Arsenicum, Cantharis, Lach., Tarentula.
• Epileptic aura more generally: Artemisia vulgaris, Calcarea carb, Nux vomica, Silica.
• Aura starting in the arm: Lach., Sulphur.
• Chorea in which the patient cannot walk but must run or jump: Kali bromatum, Natrum muriaticum; with the sensation as if the heart were in water, Bovista.
• Masturbation, impotence and their sequelae: Hyoscyamus, Mercurius solubilis, Sulph.
• Malignant pustule: Anthracinum, Antimonium crudum, Lach.
• Bullae and panaritium: Hepar sulphuris, Lach., Phosphoric acid, Sil., Dioscorea.
• Head drawn to either side: Camphora.

Clinical Uses

Epilepsy at Night, from the Sexual Sphere

The chief laurels of the remedy are here. The specification from the older masters is exact: the fits come at night, in sleep, and they do not always wake the patient; if he sleeps through them, he wakes with a violent headache. Warm room aggravates. A full moon aggravates. Cold air and wind bring their own trouble, but the direction of the modality is towards the cool. The seizure is preceded by numbness of the brain, by the head being drawn first to one side and then backwards, by restless movements of the limbs, by anger, and — the toad-like signature — by the mouth held wide open with the tongue lapping between the teeth. The fall is announced by a blood-curdling scream. Ejection of frothy, bloody saliva during the attack completes the picture. In the woman the seizure attaches to menses; in the young man to sexual excitement, or to its solitary counterfeit. In feeble-minded children with delayed development, the remedy stands beside Baryta carbonica.

Potency: 30C and above for classical prescribing. Higher potencies are indicated where the mental and moral picture is fully present, with repetition spaced to the case. Tincture and low decimals belong to another mode of practice and are not the ground on which this indication is met.

Septic Lymphangitis and Panaritium

The red line rising from a wound is the outer sign; the whitlow is the local one — pain that streaks up the whole length of the arm, blue-black swelling around the nail. Fingers injured and blackened, with the same streaking pain, extend the picture. The remedy meets the organism at the point where local containment has failed and the lymphatic corridor is carrying infection upstream, and before the process becomes systemic. 30C repeated closely in the acute; a higher potency once the picture is established. Compare Hepar sulphuris above and Lach. above where the septic diathesis is more general.

Late-Stage Cancer, Especially of the Breast

With this remedy Clarke took away the fetor in cancer cases beyond hope. That is a palliative claim, precise and limited. The offensive bloody discharge from an ulcerating breast, or from a fungating cervix, answers to Bufo. Induration of the breast glands, bloody oozing from the nipples, bloody milk, violent pain in the breasts worse at night — these are the specific indications. Cancer of the uterus with offensive discharge belongs to the same picture. Its service is to the fetor and septic exhalation of the late stages, and in that limited role its value is well recorded in the older materia medica.

Effects of Onanism and Sexual Derangement

Bufo is the remedy of the young man whose seizures follow episodes of self-abuse and whose picture includes involuntary emissions, impotence and premature ejaculation without pleasure. It is equally the remedy of the feeble-minded adolescent whose derangement of the sexual sphere is part of a general low state. Boericke's terse note, that the patient seeks solitude so as to masturbate, resolves the paradox of a patient who longs for solitude and dreads being alone. Compare Hyoscyamus, Merc. above, Sulph. above.

Feeble-Minded Children and the Prematurely Senile

Children whose bodies grow while their minds remain childish. Tittering, silly, talking nonsense, angry when not understood. Stuttering and stammering. The infant with spasms after nursing when the mother is angry or frightened is a specific and small rubric. At the other end of life, the prematurely senile adult, weak of memory, biting the nails, longing for solitude, is the same picture. Where thyroid dysfunction is part of the clinical field — rapid heart action in exophthalmos is recorded, more a hyperthyroid than a hypothyroid picture — differentiation belongs to the individual case, not to a template.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Bufo rana used for in homeopathic medicine? Bufo rana is a remedy for epilepsy — especially nocturnal seizures connected with the sexual sphere — for septic lymphangitis with red streaks running up a limb, for panaritium (whitlow), for the fetor of late-stage cancer, especially of the breast and uterus, and for the feeble-minded or prematurely senile state whose keynote is a body that grows while the mind remains childish. Classical prescribing is at 30C and above on the totality of the case.

Is Bufo rana safe? It is prepared from toad venom. The tincture, Ø, is a real venom and belongs to professional hands. Classical prescribing takes place at 30C and above, where no molecule of the venom remains and dose-based toxicology does not apply. What acts is the dynamic preparation, prescribed on the totality of the case.

When is Bufo indicated in epilepsy rather than another remedy? When the seizures come at night, during sleep; when they are connected with the sexual sphere, arising with menses in the woman or with sexual excitement or masturbation in the young man; when warm room and full moon aggravate; when the mouth is held wide open with the tongue lapping; and when the seizure is announced by a blood-curdling scream. In children with delayed development, Baryta carbonica stands beside it.

Why is Bufo used in late-stage breast cancer? The role is palliative. Clarke recorded the removal of the fetor in hopeless cases. The specific indications are the offensive bloody discharge from an ulcerating breast, induration of the breast glands, bloody oozing from the nipples, bloody milk, and violent breast pain worse at night. The remedy addresses the septic exhalation of late disease; it does not dissolve the disease itself.

References

• Boericke, W. Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica with Repertory.
• Clarke, J. H. A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica.
• Hering, C. The Guiding Symptoms of Our Materia Medica.
• Lippe, A. Keynotes and Red Line Symptoms of the Materia Medica.