toadman

   This is an East Anglian term, current till the mid-20th century, for a man with an uncanny knack of controlling horses, supposedly obtained by possession of a toad's magical bone (see *horseman's word). The term 'toad-doctor', however, as used by working-class Londoners in 1939, meant someone who cures people of aches and pains by selling them dried toad's legs, to be worn in a leather pouch round one's neck (Balleine, 1939: 6).