blood contains a concentrated poisonous substance, it is only natural that such 

 muscle tissues will cause poisoning. 



The author made many experiments, cooking the fish just as if it were being 

 prepared for ordinary table use, in order to find out whether the toxicity would 

 be affected. The results are shown in the various animal experiments in Chapter 

 III. As explained in the introduction, the method used was a very simple way 

 of applying heat to the fish. It not only showed no signs of diminishing the 

 toxicity, but rather increased the incidence of poisoning. This agrees with the 

 accounts of accidental poisoning in human beings, most of the cases having been 

 caused by cooked fish. The greatest nvonber of poisonings appear to have r e- 

 sulted from such preparations as fish soup, while eating the fish raw produced the 

 fewest oases. In one family which ate fish soup, those who drank the soup were 

 poisoned while those who only ate the pieces of fish from the soup were not. 

 These facts perliaps indicate that the poison is resistant to heat but soluble in 

 water. In not a few cases experimental animals ate the raw flesh without 

 exhibiting any ill effects, but began vomiting immediately after eating flesh 

 cooked in water and fed to them together with its Juices. 



Frcxn all of this it is clear that poisonous fish should not be eaten even 

 when cooked. ^ 



[page 120] l 



Several specimens which were broiled directly over the fire also showed no 

 lessenings of toxicity. Although there are comparatively few cases of accidental 

 poisonings caused by broiled fish, this is probably due to sonie other reason. 

 Fish suspected of being poisonous should not be eaten broiled either. 



Specimens prepared as dried fish, as explained in a later section, also showed 

 no loss of toxicity. 



As shown above, not one of the fishes prepared by various ordinary methods 

 shovred any loss of toxicity when tested on experimental animals. 



Methods of eliminating the posion will be taken up again in a later section. 

 [Page 121] 



Section 3 Methods of Extraction 



The following experiments on methods of extracting the posion were performed 

 by the author in the field. 



Ten gr of raw muscle tissue from the fish to be tested was left for 72 hours 

 in ICX) CO of absolute alcohol. After filtering, the solution was heated and con- 

 centrated over an alcohol lamp until the odor of alcohol disappeared. Distilled 

 water was added to make 100 co and the extract was injected subcutaneous ly *• 

 The results are shown in the following table. In no case was there any effect. 

 Attempts were made to prepare a more concentrated fluid, but circiimstances made 

 this impossible and we were consequently unable to determine the lethal amount. 



*In addition 10 gr of the same raw flesh with 100 cc of water added was 

 cooked over an alcohol lamp, cooled, filtered, the filtrate thinned to 100 cc 

 with distilled water, and the resulting extract was injected subcutaneous ly into 

 mice. In no case did it have any effect. 



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