The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body by Frances Ashcroft

to the fingers and toes, and is then followed by gradual paralysis of the skeletal muscles, resulting in loss of balance, incoherent speech, and an inability to move one’s limbs. Ultimately, the respiratory muscles are paralysed, which can be fatal. The heart is not affected, as it has a different type of sodium channel that is not targeted by tetrodotoxin. The toxin is also unable to cross the blood–brain barrier so that, rather horrifyingly, although unable to move and near death, the patient remains conscious. There is no antidote and death usually occurs within two to twenty-four hours. In 1845, the surgeon on board the Dutch brig Postilion , sailing off the Cape of Good Hope, observed that two seamen ‘died scarcely seventeen minutes after partaking of the liver of the fish’. However, victims can recover completely if they are given artificial respiratory support until the toxin has washed out of the body – which takes a few days.

Hiroshige’s ‘Amberjack and Fugu’. The puffer fish (fugu) is the smaller fish.
     
    In Japan, the puffer fish is known as fugu, and is considered a great delicacy. Unfortunately, the fish is expensive in more ways than one, as unless it is carefully prepared the flesh can be toxic, and every year several people die from tetrodotoxin poisoning. Most incidents arise from fishermen eating their own catch. Restaurant casualties are far rarer because all fugu chefs must now be specially trained and licensed, which involves passing a rigorous test. Nevertheless, it occasionally happens. One of fugu’s most celebrated victims was the famous Japanese kabuki actor Bando Mitsugoro who died after eating it in 1975: he had demanded four servings of the liver, which is especially dangerous, and the restaurant had felt unable to refuse such a distinguished customer. Perhaps this is why fugu is forbidden to the Emperor of Japan. Properly prepared, the fish is supposed to cause a very mild intoxication and produce a stimulating, tingling sensation in the mouth. On the single occasion when I tried it myself, I found it rather insipid: it was the spice of danger that enlivened the dish.
    Not all cases of fugu poisoning are due to the deliberate ingestion of the fish. In 1977, three people died in Italy after eating imported puffer fish mislabelled as anglerfish. Ten years later, two people in Illinois developed symptoms resembling those of tetrodotoxin poisoning after eating soup made from imported frozen ‘monkfish’. Analysis by the FDA confirmed the presence of the toxin and triggered a mass recall of all sixty-four crates of the imported product. Claims lawyers instantly leapt into action. Poisoning from commercially cooked shellfish is also worryingly common in China and Taiwan: between 1997 and 2001 three hundred people were intoxicated and sixteen died.
    A wide variety of animals contain tetrodotoxin, from reef fish, crabs and starfish to marine flatworms, salamanders, frogs and toads. Most use it as a biological defence, but some, like the deadly blue-ringed octopus, package it in venom to poison their prey. It was a mystery why so many different kinds of animal should make tetrodotoxin until it was discovered that it is actually made by a bacterium ( Psuedoalteromonas tetraodonia ) that the animal eats or harbours within its intestine. Puffer fish reared in the absence of such bacteria do not contain tetrodotoxin. Whether such fish, in which the element of Russian roulette is removed, will be as highly prized by aficionados as the native fish is an interesting question.
    The fictional British agent James Bond (007) appears to have a special attraction for tetrodotoxin, for he has been poisoned with it on no less than two occasions. From Russia with Love ends on a moment of high drama when the SMERF agent Rosa Klebb kicks him with a poison-filled spike mounted on the tip of her boot and he is left to die. Bond, of course, is invincible and the next novel ( Dr No ) begins with him