Читать книгу From Poison Arrows to Prozac - Stanley Feldman - Страница 14

It was the English naturalist and adventurer, Squire Charles Waterton (1782–1865) who first described the poison as ‘wourali’, the name given to it by the natives in the Esquibito river region of South America. In his book Wanderings in South America he described his adventures and observations during his journeys in the Amazon jungle in the company of his ‘Indian’ Machousi guides and a freed African slave called Dadi. Although he was principally interested in the great variety of bird life he found there he made a detailed study of many animals, including sloths, monkeys, caymans (which are like alligators) and snakes. It was during the first of his four trips to South America that he observed the Indians using arrows tipped in poison to catch their prey. It was as a result of this interest that he came to play an important role in the curare story.

If you were to visit the town of Wakefield in West Yorkshire in England you might come across Waterton Road and Waterton School, both named in honour of the remarkable, eccentric squire of nearby Walton Hall. Charles Waterton was born at Walton Hall, into an aristocratic, Roman Catholic dynasty with links to several European royal families who claimed they could trace their origins back to Edward the Confessor.

One of his ancestors, John de Waterton, served as Master of the King’s Horse at Agincourt. Unlike many aristocratic families, his forebears refused to convert to Protestantism during the reign of Henry VIII.

Charles Waterton was educated at the Catholic Stoneyhurst College and remained a devout, ascetic Catholic throughout his life. He lived an active life to a ripe old age in spite of repeated attacks of ‘ague’ (probably malaria). Even when he was over eighty, a neighbour saw him climbing a tree to return a bird that had fallen from its nest. He died following a fall on his estate, in which he fractured several ribs and damaged his liver.

In 1812, as a young man of thirty, he made his first voyage to Guyana, where his uncle had coffee plantations. He set about establishing one of the finest collections of preserved birds and animals in Europe, using his own preserving technique to maintain the colour and structure of the animals. He maintained that stuffing them distorted their shape. Many of the preserved specimens can be seen today in the museum at Wakefield. They are still colourful and lifelike.

It was the demonstration by the natives of the lethal effects of the dart and arrow poison that caused Charles Waterton to become interested in ‘wourali’. He described his travels, his discoveries and his vicissitudes in Guyana in his highly successful book Wanderings in South America, first published in 1879. It is written in the manner of a diary and, in spite of some exaggerations and embellishments, it very soon became a bestseller.

There is little doubt that Charles was an odd man. He was tall and thin and of a somewhat domineering manner. He was an astute observer and a resourceful inventor, but he was also very eccentric. He married Anne Edmonstone, who was descended from Arawak royalty. He tells how he fell in love with her when she was a baby and waited until she was seventeen before marrying her. When she died in childbirth he was so grief-stricken that he vowed never to sleep comfortably ever again. From that time on he slept with a wooden block as a pillow.

Waterton is credited with having introduced bird boxes into Britain. At first, this was to try to nurture little owls, but later they became widely adopted on the estate.

Reading his story leaves one with the impression that he was a restless adventurer who, like many wealthy men of his era, became interested in natural science. This interest was heightened by his experiences on his journeys in Guyana and his expeditions in both South and North America (he was particularly taken with the civility and elegance of the Americans and with the handsome buildings that lined Broadway in New York).

He describes how, with the help of the slave Dadi, he set about collecting animals and birds, with the minimum of damage, so that they could be dissected and preserved. It was due to his skill at taxidermy, using mercuric chloride to harden and preserve the skin, that he was able to establish a huge collection of preserved (he insists none of the specimens were stuffed) exotic animals and birds, including monkeys, sloths, parrots and alligators for his menagerie at Walton Hall.

His enthusiasm as a collector knew no bounds. He describes how he was determined to capture a large cayman and how, after several attempts to snare the animal using a large hook baited with meat, he eventually came up with a special device consisting of a pole armed with many hooks, like a cat-o’-nine-tails. When, after many nights of anticipation, the animal took the baited hook and was impaled, he leaped onto its back as it was pulled to the riverbank.

The animal was duly dissected and preserved and can be seen to this day in the museum at Wakefield. The account given by one of the Indians who assisted in this capture suggests that it had its head in a snare and was half dead when this particular episode occurred. On another occasion Waterton wrote of how he fought with a huge snake, which all but squeezed the life out of him, in order to overcome it and add it to his collection. He describes his disappointment at failing to have himself bitten by a ‘vampire’ (blood-sucking bat) in spite of sleeping exposed for several nights.

During his various journeys he suffered from repeated bouts of malaria and had few qualms about bleeding himself to relieve the ensuing fever. He sustained several quite serious injuries during his adventures and endured extremes of temperature and humidity. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Waterton travelled without personal servants, relying on assistance from the natives. He carried no tent, only a sheet under which he sheltered when it rained and when he needed to carry out his dissections of the animals he had captured.

There is no doubt that Charles Waterton was a strong, brave man and a fearless adventurer, but he was not above using exaggeration in his stories so as to make them more exciting for the reader. This had the unfortunate effect of making the scientific community suspicious of many of his observations and confirming his reputation as an oddball. This reputation was not helped by the reports from visitors to Walton Hall that, on occasions, Waterton would sit under the table growling and pretending to be a dog. On one occasion, while in his dog persona, he is said to have bitten the leg of a visitor. It is reported that he tried to fly and launched himself off the roof of an outhouse, proclaiming he was ‘navigating the atmosphere’; while his physician Dr Hobson tells of coming across the seventy-seven-year-old Waterton scratching the back of his head with the big toe of his right foot in the manner of a monkey.

Because of these oddities it is easy to dismiss Waterton’s achievements, but his contributions to science are real and show evidence of a talent for detailed scientific observation.

In his studies on the behaviour of birds he records 119 species that he found in the grounds of Walton Hall. His efforts at animal and bird conservation and his descriptions of the feeding, mating and behaviour of birds, and the exclusively arboreal habitat of the sloth, have stood the test of time. The description he gave in his reports of the different species of monkey demonstrate his patience and objectivity as an observer of animal life.

He built a 9-foot-high wall around the 3-mile perimeter of Walton Hall (he said he paid for it from the wine he did not drink!) in order to allow him to establish, what was probably the world’s first nature reserve, on his estate. He fought the first legal battle in England over an environmental issue. He accused his neighbour, a soap manufacturer, Mr Simpson, of polluting his lake. Unfortunately, he died before he had the satisfaction of having the nuisance removed to another part of Wakefield, by court order. However, he will always be remembered for his interest in wourali (curare), for without him and the specimens of the poison he brought back to England this story might not have progressed as it did.

Waterton made four separate voyages to the New World. In Wanderings in South America he gives an account of his journeys. It contains a detailed description of the effects of the South American arrow poison. He described seeing a wild pig killed by the natives using poisoned arrows. He tells of the manner of the pig’s death in some detail: ‘It affects the nervous system and thus destroys the vital functions of the body… the pig managed less than 200 paces before it dropped dead.’

After his second journey, he brought a large sample of wourali back with him to England. He used some of this specimen in an experiment on an ass. He injected a dose of the poison into a leg of the animal after tying a ligature around the leg a little above the site of the injection. He observed that ‘the animal walked about as usual, and ate his food as though he were well. After an hour had elapsed, the bandage was untied and ten minutes later death overtook him.’

Waterton is not forgotten, and the Waterton Society helps to keep alive the legacy of this truly remarkable eccentric