Medicine: Useful Poison

"A fantastic poison vaguely connected with South American Indians and detective novels" was Dr. Harold R. Griffith's first idea of curare (rhymes with safari). But in last week's Canadian Medical Association Journal, the Montreal doctor tells how he changed his mind, pioneered the use of curare to relax tense muscles during operations.

Death in Jigtime. Curare's "poisonous reputation" began in 1595 when Sir Walter Raleigh sailed up the Orinoco and found the jungle Indians killing game with blow pipe darts dipped in black, tarry stuff (curare) cooked up from native plants (see cut). Its reputation was not improved when 19th-Century experimenters found...

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