Captain Poison
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
How ciguatoxins and other poisons find their way into our food chain. he three voyages that ex- rifying to many. The fact that half plorer, navigator, and car- of the people watching would have tographer Captain James gone blind could only validate any Cook made around the belief in eclipses as portents of evil. world between 1768 and Cook—who ate albatrosses—was 1779 are legendary, not not a superstitious man. There is no T to mention exemplary in indication of foreboding evident in Captain cartographic excellence. Arguably, his journals before the South Pacific his second Pacific voyage was his eclipse of September 6, 1774. least pleasant. Cook eventually met Returning from shore to the ship his demise at the hands of a bunch the following day quite famished, of insulted Hawaiians on his third Cook, along with naturalists Johann voyage. But it was during the sec- Forster and his son Georg, born in ond voyage (1772–75) that he had to 1754, probably relished the thought C ook’s put up with the incessant whining of digging into an unusual-looking of naturalist Johann Forster. And local fish that the crew had ac- it was on this star-crossed second quired from the locals in exchange voyage that he fell ill, twice—once for cloth. The ship’s illustrator was Poison with “bilious colick,” and then with busy drawing the fish, and refused a blocked colon; ran headlong into to allow it to be fired up for din- By Mark Siddall Antarctic ice—twice; and nearly ner. But the fish had been cleaned, died from eating fish—twice! and so the liver and roe sacs were After leaving the New Hebri- fair game. After a single bite, the des (today Vanuatu), which Cook trio surely must have thought better claimed for England, the HMS Res- of it. The burning sensation in their olution sailed to the south in order to mouths and throats would have arrive in New Caledonia in time for been immediate. By the wee hours some surreptitious eclipse watching of the morning they were suffering on September 7, 1774. Cook’s care- the full effects of pufferfish poison- ful observations of the Moon’s tran- ing: their skin felt as though it were sit during an annular solar eclipse in a blast furnace while simultane- in 1766 had determined the position ously frosted over with ice, Cook of Newfoundland. Longitude was later wrote. He was oddly incapable terrifically important to navigation. of distinguishing heavy objects from As another eclipse would not be vis- light ones, but that probably con- An oil painting of New Caledonia ible from the British Isles until 1925, cerned Cook less than his constant M by William Hodges, first exhibited more such remote eclipse encoun- and involuntary voiding at both in 1778 at the Royal Academy ters were needed. For a variety of ends as progressive paralysis set in. E MUSEU M of Arts, London. Tasked with recording Captain Cook’s second cultures, a solar eclipse was not to All these terrifying effects resulted voyage, Hodges included Cook’s be taken lightly. Watching the sun from a very slight, mild exposure AL MARITI N ship, Resolution, distantly anchored being completely swallowed up by to what is now known as tetrodo- NATIO and attended by three canoes. the moon seems to have been ter- toxin, a nerve poison that concen- 14 NATURAL H I S TO RY April 2014 April 2014 NATURAL H I S TO RY 15 late Jomon period, in the could get their hands on, it didn’t take long for entrepre- Cook was meticulous with his crew, keeping them first millennium BC, their neurial hibachi-ists to grill whatever scraps they managed on a rigid diet to hold scurvy at bay. One can imagine bones are found scattered to dig out of the trash bins from local restaurants. The a salivating crew dropping anchor in azure blue, cool among those of humans death toll from street-grilled fugu entrails continued to seas resplendent with reef fish. Absent Cook’s stern gaze (though it’s unclear if there mount until General Douglas MacArthur created a strict while he was ashore, the prospect of fresh food roasting was a causal relationship). fugu-licensing program that required safe preparation of on deck would have been a tantalizing and welcome re- Two thousand years later, pufferfish and thorough incineration of their toxic offal. spite from the daily doses of “antiscorbutic” sauerkraut during the Sengoku, or For some time now, the only deaths from fugu have and spruce “beer” rations. For a crew of 118 they’d Warring Kingdoms, peri- been self-inflicted. The muscle meat of tetraodontid need a lot of fish, though, or at least some big ones. By od (1467–1568), the fish bit fish—named for the two pairs of fused buck teeth form- the time Cook returned to the ship, two huge, reddish- back. Typhoons had twice ing their beaklike jaws, and including more than 120 colored fish had been snagged and hauled on board. spared Japan from Mongol species of pufferfish, globefish, porcupine fish, boxfish, They were promptly cooked and divvied among the invasions in the thirteenth and blowfish—is perfectly safe to eat. Presently, close to crew, with the officers and petty officers getting more century. These “divine ten thousand tons of fugu are eaten in Japan every year, than their fair share, of course. Vegetable side dishes are winds”—the origin of the about half of which is the farm-raised species torafugu, or not noted in Cook’s journal. What is noted is that “in word kamikaze—over- tiger blowfish Takifugu( rubripes). Its consumption is more the Evening everyone who had eat of these fish were turned most of the hastily common in the southern regions—there are some 80,000 seiz’d with Violent pains in the head and Limbs, so as built Mongol ships and sent fugu chefs in Osaka alone. All fugu chefs are licensed to be unable to stand, together with a kind of Scorch- the surviving crews limp- by a government agency, but only after demonstrating ing heat all over the Skin.” The symptoms of scorch- ing back to their captured mastery of the proper cleaning, preparation, and disposal ing heat foreshadow the same neurotoxic symptoms Korean seaports. The wind of pufferfish. The supposed numbing sensation that is a Cook and the Forsters would experience three months shifted in 1592, however, commonly rumored frisson of fugu sashimi is entirely later. According to the account of the ship’s surgeon, when daimyo (warrior-gen- imagined by the patron—perhaps after too much sake. William Anderson, at least five of the men suffered for eral) Hideyoshi Toyotomi Any actual numbing four days before get- (1537–1598) summoned sensation one experienc- ting back on their feet. the samurai from all over es should be quickly fol- This time, unfortu- Japan to Hizen Nagoya lowed by hospitalization. nately, the scavenging Castle, on the coast of Ky- What’s more, fugu’s taste animals on board fared ushu island, to rally for a is subtle to the point of worse from eating the full-scale invasion of Ko- being bland. Nonethe- scraps, with the final rea. Having failed, like less, there is apparently death toll amounting Captain Cook, to con- a large culinary niche to one dog, a hog, and sult the locals, a whole that offers $400 plates of a parakeet. regiment of samurai were tasteless fish artfully ar- Ciguatera poisoning felled by their one last big ranged in the shape of a was well known to the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LIBRARY fish feast the night before chrysanthemum—which Carib people of the A color woodcut titled Pufferfish courtesan and her jellyfish companion, circa 1818–1830, by the Japanese embarkation. The Japanese is, incidentally, a flower Lesser Antilles, who artist Shigenobu Yanagawa. The piece plays upon the allure, and the possible danger, of indulging in fugu. invasions of Korea in 1592 associated with funerals attributed the condi- and 1598 ultimately failed, from Krakow, Poland, to tion to the cigua, a trates in the livers and reproductive organs of pufferfish. and were disastrous for both countries in terms of casual- Kyushu, Japan. local turban snail (Cit- Although the crew tried, no one could catch the ship’s ties and treasure. But meanwhile, Toyotomi banned the INS tarium pica) still prized dogs after the poor hounds wolfed down the scraps. consumption of fugu (the Japanese word for pufferfish, everal months D today for stews in the Luckily the dogs voided the offending liver on their own meaning “river pig”). Any samurai caught slurping up before the New RNIS DEZ Virgin Islands. Cigua- A and survived, but a hungry pig that got into the trash the perilous delicacy would lose the entirety of his inher- S Caledonian eclipse tera is characterized by Fugu restaurant on touristy Dotonbori Street in Osaka, Japan didn’t make it through the next day. On that following itance. The ban is said to have been overturned 300 years “picnic”—the one that paralysis of the legs, day, local Micronesians, seeing a pufferfish hanging on later, reportedly in 1888, by Japan’s first Prime Minister, nearly extinguished Cook and the two Forsters with uncontrolled salivation, and a burning sensation all deck, frantically pointed and made dramatic gestures to Hirobumi Ito, who apparently took a personal liking to fugu liver—there had been a previous near miss with over. It is interesting to speculate whether the crew of the ship’s crew, which were, no doubt, the Micronesian fugu—and the deaths quickly resumed.