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Why was he interested in collecting a sample?
It was a scientific interest. Although curare was known to bring about death
by acting as a powerful muscle relaxant, experiments in Waterton's lifetime
showed that an animal could be given curare and then kept alive with artificial
respiration until the poison had worn off. Surgeons tried without success
to use it as a cure for tetanus and rabies.
Investigations in the nineteenth century failed to get beyond discovering
the propertes of curare, but since the 1940's it has been used widely in
surgery along with an anaesthetic.
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