Word: tetrodotoxin
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...large New World toad (Bufo marinus) and one or more species of puffer fish. The toad, Davis reports, is a "veritable chemical factory," containing hallucinogens, powerful anesthetics and chemicals that affect the heart and nervous system. The fish is more potent still, containing a deadly nerve poison called tetrodotoxin...
...learn how these poisons might relate to zombiism, Davis turned to an unlikely source: Japanese medical literature. Every year a number of Japanese suffer Botanist Davis tetrodotoxin poisoning as a result of eating incorrectly prepared puffer fish, the great delicacy fugu. Davis found that entire Japanese case histories "read like accounts of zombification." Indeed, nearly every symptom reported by Narcisse and his doctors is described, from the initial difficulty breathing to the final paralysis, glassy-eyed stare and yet the retention of mental faculties. In at least two cases, Japanese victims were declared dead but recovered before they could...
...sent samples of the zombie potion to laboratories in Europe and the U.S., where in one experiment it induced a trancelike state in rats. Such research in the past led to the discovery of curare, an arrow poison from the Amazon now used to paralyze muscles during surgery. Tetrodotoxin may also one day find its place in the medical armamentarium. "People who have lived in the tropics for centuries have learned things about plants and animals that we have not fathomed," says Richard Evan Schultes, head of Harvard's renowned Botanical Museum. "We must not leave any stone unturned...
...power, the poison exists in very small amounts, and its molecule is so delicate that it falls to pieces when chemically molested. Generations of chemists managed to make stronger and stronger concentrations of tetrodotoxin, and in 1949 Professor Akira Yokoo isolated the poison in pure crystalline form. But still the molecular formula defied investigation...
Japanese chemists are also hard at work on a more practical chore: finding an antidote for tetrodotoxin poisoning. But success may not be applauded by risk-loving gourmets. When a bottle of antitoxin is standing in every restaurant, the dangerous fugu will have become just another fish; fugu roulette will have lost its excitement, and something unique will have vanished from Japanese culture...