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KMID : 0616619950010010361
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Journal of Soonchunhyang Medical College
1995 Volume.1 No. 1 p.361 ~ p.366
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Curarizing Agents from Natural Sources and its Clinical Benefits
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Abstract
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The history of curare begin with the discovery of America by Europeans, when curare was not known to the west until the sixteenth century. During their voyage, one of the group was hit in the hand by arrow and died soon afterward. Curare was widely used as an arrow poison at that time by many Amazonian Indian group and comes from plant species of Chondrodendron and Strychnos vines.
Chodrodendron tonentosum and Strychnos toxifera are the chief sources of curare and grow wildly as broad-leaved, woody vines in tronical South America lawland forests. The method of delivery of poison to the animal being hunted, that is, by blowgun, by bow and arrow, or by spear, also added some early mystician to the story of curare. Apparently, the back, stem and roots were primary used.
Claude Bernard discovered the essential physiologic action of curare on the neuromuscular junction and Harold King isolated d-tubocurarine from natural curare extracts. Intocostrin which was natural curare alkaloid and made first its entry into clinical anesthetic practice by Harold Griffith and Enid Johnson in 1942.
Curare with clinical application has not only received significant use in muscle relaxation during operation, but in treatment of spastic cerebral palsy, in rehabilitation therapy of patients stricken with poliomyelitis, in counteracting the effets of tetanus, in setting broken bones, and in diagnosis of myasthenia gravis.
Recently, in the outside of Chondrodendron and Strychnos vines, curarizing agents are discovered from various plants, animal and bacterias.
Thus curarizing materials from natural sources are widely distributed and had discused on the occasion of clinical benefits.
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