On the Physiological action of Balloonfish poison 



It appears that in China and Japan, where balloonfish are used as food, 

 the fact that the balloonfish is poisonous has been known since very ancient 

 times. In the Shan Kai Ching written by Po Ti, Minister to Ti Shun, it is 

 noted that "eating this kills people". In 1645 Shigeyorl Ifatsue published his 

 Mokvuso in i^ch is found the famous old saying "I would like to eat the bal- 

 loonfish, but ray life is precious to ne." TJiere are Tiiany other notes on 

 balloonfish poison in ancient books, and in quite a few instances the writers 

 even made more detailed reports to the effect that the poison was contained in 

 the liver and the gonads. These, however, were all mere records of experience 

 and there was not one person viho sought the balloonfish poison scientifically. 

 The study by Mateuhara (1883)-'- is regarded as the first attempt at a scienti- 

 fic handling of this natter,, He fed balloonfish ovaries to dogs, injected 

 fluids from the ovaries, and ascertained that these methods produced symptoins 

 of poisoning. Later there was a continuous series of reports by Takahashi and 

 Inoko (1889, 1892, l893}2»3,/i, Ishihara (1917, 1924)5»6, and Yano (1937)7, all 

 of ;;^iom made pharmacological studies of the toxic action of balloonfish poison, 

 by Tahara (189A, 1909, 1910, 1912)°»9»10tll and Xaneyama (1943)^2^ ^o made 

 detailed studies of the chemistry of the poison, and. by Tani (19-40, 194.5)^3^ a 

 pupil of Professor PXikuda of Kyushu University, ttoo made detailed studies on 

 the toxicity of various organs of all species of balloonfish at various seasons. 

 Since the author has ali^ady (I9i4.7)^ discussed the results of all of these 

 studies in an earlier article, they will be omitted here. 



Among this great abundance of reports is that of Ishihara (1917)5, who ad- 

 ministered balloonfish poison to various animals and Investigated their reac<' 

 tions and particularly the lethal dosage. The present author has, however, 

 experimented with the poison on an even greater number of animals from the 

 human at the top taxonomic level down to the lowly protozoans — accepting the 

 results reported hy other researchers for those animals such as the human and 

 the rabbit on v?hich h© ^^o not able to experiment himself — and he has reached 

 some interesting conclusions ^ich are reported herein. 



Staterials and Methods 



As a source of balloonfish poison the entrails of the komon fUgu 

 fSghaeroidee alboplumbeus (Richardson) j were fed to animals, and a 0.01$ solu- 

 tion of SanlcylT's Tetrodotoxln (T) or a solution extracted by Tahara "s method 

 from the viscera of S. alboplumbeua were employed. These solutions ware in- 

 jected subcutaneously into vertebrates and were injected or dropped into 

 suitable places such as the body cavity in ascidians, the mouth, eye, or legs 

 of insects and crustaceans, the body cavity or gills sf oollusks, and the body 

 cavity of echinoderms and coelsnterates, and their- reactions were observed. 



As is shown in the tables, these expeidments were performed upon a large 

 number of species of experimental animals. The heading "reaction time" means 

 the length of time required befora any reaction to the balloonfish poison was 

 exhibited. For example with the tonosamagaeru [Re.na nigromaeulata HallowellJ 

 it ie the period of time from directly after the injection until the frog began 

 to roll its eyes and to breathe in a fashion reeembling the Cheyne-Stokes res- 

 piration. The "lethal time" is the period until respiration and all mo\'oment 

 cease. A peculiarity of balloonfish poison, however, is that even after res- 

 piration ceases the heart continues to beat. 



*A continuation of work done at the Tokyo University Natural Science Labora- 

 tory 



198 



