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 imbecility is more frequent in Bufo than the active states of insanity or mania, yet these appear occasionally through the remedy.
The first symptom in the text reads,
“Desire for solitude in order to practice masturbation.”
This alone throws a flood of light upon the nature of the remedy; the lack of government, the lack of control over the sexual longing, and the low-mindedness whereby he is willing to abandon himself to the lower things that are in the human race, to perverted practices and vices. It tells a great story.
“Whimpered, then cried, until he fell into a state of coma.”
These states, as brought out clinically, are manifested in adult people who act as if they were children. An aspect of child-like simplicity is present and the mind returns to a state of child-like innocence.
An adult takes on the ways of a child, as a state of imbecility. This mental state is especially found under Baryta carb. in adults who have never developed beyond childhood, who have always remained children.
A person reasons like a child, talks like a child, whimpers like a child, cries like a child, wants to be petted like a child; so it is in Baryta carb. We find this state of mind in children who have developed epilepsy, but we do not prescribe this remedy on account of the epilepsy; the child has not developed properly, and the epilepsy is only one of the manifestations.
The cause is far back, and is really the psoric condition. Thereby the mental state has not developed, the child has not grown into a man or woman in intellectual attainments or wisdom, and remains as a whimpering, screaming child.
This lack of development is found in Bufo and in Baryta carb.; they are related to each other in that the child-like state remains while the body grows.
We see in these medicines the fear and simplicity that belongs to the child; always sickly, deficient, never reaching adult fullness or growth, always a child.
“How much like a child that woman appears,” or
“How much like a child that man is.”
We say that of some old people, they are so childish. The old routinists have said of those people who are prematurely old or have taken on senility, that they need Baryta carb.
This medicine also stands out in bold type for those prematurely senile; the man at fifty acts like an old broken-down man of eighty; he has lost all he had five or six years ago, and has taken on a child-like simplicity and innocence, an appearance of imbecility.
Then it is that we think of this medicine. Baryta carb. has hitherto been the leading one, but Bufo is also very important.
“Left his bed after apathy and ran like mad through the house.”
There it branches off from the condition of imbecility to that of excitement of mind. Most of the Bufo patients will be passive, placid, not in a state of excitement or mania, but passive in everything. Feeble-minded, simple, child-like.
“Weak memory and idiotic.”
“Longs for solitude, yet dreads being alone.”
“Angry, bites at surrounding objects.”
“Easily laughs or cries.”
It has been used in delirium tremens, during the stages of excitement and mental prostration, biting and grasping things.
“Titters,” now that is more expressive than to say she laughs, she titters at every little thing that is said. Titters and says foolish things; titters over things that are not laughable; everything said seems to be funny to this simple, child-like woman.
You know a child laughs and is merry, but we do not expect such things in adults except when what is said is particularly ludicrous. These symptoms are sometimes met in epileptics.
“Easily laughs or cries;” easily affected, and extremely sensitive, nervous nature. Again, the most extreme anxiety, night and day, wringing the hands and talking about something awful that is going to happen when there is nothing to happen; some awful event, some terrible thing in the future, it is all darkness and despair, walks the floor and wrings the hands and says over and over the same awful things that are going to take place, when in reality the future is safe and there is nothing to be anxious about.
This occurs in cases of insanity. Such as are approaching imbecility are passive, they have a lack of comprehension of things around; but those that are going into. insanity have an increased imagination of the things that surround them. Where these symptoms have been induced by secret vice.
“Become angry if misunderstood.”
This is approaching insanity. It is well known to medical men and to the courts that these conditions of insanity intermingle in the human race with epilepsy, and that an epileptic is not always held responsible for murder, because it is so well known that the epileptic state of the body is not confined merely to the spasms of the muscles, the sudden falling, foaming at the mouth, clonic spasms, biting of the tongue, etc. These alone do not constitute all of epilepsy.
The epileptic suffers from an underlying psoric state, which in one is a state of imbecility and in another a state of epileptic manifestation, and in another a state of insanity. Those who inherit this peculiar constitution, even in one family, exhibit it in different ways; one will be insane, another an imbecile, another will die of cancer and another will be an epileptic.
Bufo, underlies such a constitution; it is an antipsoric, it is a deep-seated, vital remedy; it goes to the very heart and interior of man’s physical nature, and from this mental state it may manifest itself in his ultimates, the fingers and toes, eyes, ears, etc., so that even the touch is disordered.
There are patches upon the skin that have loss of sensation and others with increased sensations. Spasms of various muscles, sometimes local spasm and sometimes complete epileptic spasms with bleeding at the mouth, unconsciousness, falling down. Besides such grave state, it has milder states that may be called dizziness or vertigo.
The milder conditions of dizziness have gone on to sudden falling and collapse, a sudden state of unconsciousness with spasms and biting of the tongue. In the proving we find attacks of apathy and partial coma; numbness of the brain. So we see in the text that we have conditions ranging from mere dizziness to a complete and profound epilepsy.
The study of this remedy may reveal to you something of the, nature of epilepsy. From the allopathic treatises on epilepsy you will only get the appearance of the fit, and the fit is treated as epilepsy. They hunt for remedies to subdue and control the fit, thinking when they have done that they have cured the patient.
They feed these patients Bromides in large doses and now and then they branch off into some side issue, but go back to the Bromides and stupefy and make imbeciles of their patients. Prescribing for the fit has never cured the patient,
“Congestive headaches.”
Eyes: Again, its action on the circular fibres of the abdominal aorta furnishes a key-note in epilepsy. An awful sensation of anxiety is felt in the abdomen and then there is a sudden loss of consciousness; the aura or warning is first felt in the abdomen. Some writers have described it as in the solar plexus. The awful sensation occurs as an anxiety and then he falls.
“Cannot bear the sight of brilliant objects.”
“Amaurosis,” etc.
“Pupils largely dilated and unaffected by light before attack.”
“More acute vision.”
It has spasmodic conditions of the eye, but increased vision and diminished sensation, and lastly a tendency to profound trophic disturbance.
Little blisters form upon the eye. These little blisters also form upon the skin, and the integument is thrown off and there is. no healing. Ulcers will form upon the cornea.
“Eyes become highly injected.”
Paralytic conditions of the lids and muscles of the eye. There is disturbance of all the senses.
“Music is unbearable.”
Ears: One who is in a natural state is expected to enjoy beautiful music, whereas in this remedy music brings about a state of anxiety. The sense of hearing is so violently exaggerated that every little noise is distressing.
“Purulent otorrhoea.”
“Swelling of the ears; of the parotids.”
“Phlegmonous erysipelas about the face.”
“Falling out of the teeth” in the peculiar disease known as Rigg’s disease.
“Stuttering and stammering; gets angry when incoherent speech is not understood.”
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.