Curare POISON - Specimen details
| Catalogue Number: 49177 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Image | Plant Name | 108.01 LOGANIACEAE Strychnos toxifera | Entry Book Number | ||
| Artefact Name | Curare POISON | Vernacular Name | |||
| Iso Country | Brazil | TDWG Region | Brazil | ||
| Parts Held | Curare POISON | Geography Description | Brazil, Southern America | ||
| Uses | Curare POISONUse: VERTEBRATE POISONS User: Man | TDWG use | VERTEBRATE POISONS | ||
| Storage | Bottles, boxes etc | Related Items | |||
| Donor | Pharm Soc GB | Donor No | 37 F 8 | ||
| Donor Date | Donor Notes | Dawson WRx0Dx0A | |||
| Collector | Collector No | ||||
| Collection Notes | Collection Date | ||||
| Exhibition | Expedition | ||||
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| Notes: | Opuscular source: Letter from Mappin Stores (Brazil) Ltd, 9-10 Savile Row London 18 May 1938: To: The Curator, Pharm Soc GB. 17 Bloomsbury Square W.C. 1. Dear Sir, I am over on a visit from Brazil, and before leaving Sao Paulo I was approached by a frien, d of mine who is deeply interested in fostering the native talent of the Brazilian Indians in the unexplored regions of the States of Matto Grosso, Para and Amazonas, and together with a small body of enthusiastic countrymen of his, they are apparently ma, king considerable headway in becoming friendly with these uncultured tribes and in studying their native habits and their ways of life generally. My friend handed me a small pot containing what I understand is a very precious compound, namely CURARE. Thi, s poison which the Indians use on the points of their arrows - has so far, I believe, not been analysed, nor the composition of same fully understoon. I enclose a translation I made of an article which appeared in the local Daily of Sao Paulo on 13th of, last month. Yours truly, WR Dawson. (See translation below) Label source: Research work done by the Brazilian scientist, Paulo Carneiro, in Paris. The Brazilian scientist Snr Paulo Berrido Carneiro, interviewed by a rep of the Globe of Paris with rega, rd to his discovery said. 'My researches have been partly guided by the vegetal richness, of the flora of the amazon. Some few years ago I was able to determine the composition of Guarana and of the plant which produces it 'paullinea cupana'. Invited by, the Institute Pasteur of Paris to continue my analysis, I studied active principles of Curare. I was able to study diff sps of Strychnos and various samples of Curare. Apart from the interest which this product bears to the puysiology of the muscular ne, rvous system, it holds interesting possibilities in the therapeutic application. It was only after a long series of investigations that I was able to separate the 2 new alcaloides, which I am calling Strychnov and curaletaline, both of which are present, in samples of curare, and estrychnos lethalis, collected by Barbosa Rodrigues in the Amazonas. In my note to the Academy of Scientists in Paris and in the memorial which I sent to the Chemical Soc of France, I fully gave the technical particulars resulti, ng from my long study. | ||||