Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/703

Rh prolonged into a filament. A black spot behind the gill cover is said to distinguish it from a somewhat similar fish, the "red-eared pilchard," which has a yellow spot behind its gill cover. Schomburgk gives testimony to the poisonous properties of the "yellow-tailed sprat" when found at certain periods of the year among the Leeward and Virgin Islands.

The eating of this poisonous "sprat" is said to be followed by most violent symptoms and rapid death. The common saying in the West Indies—that if you begin at the head you never have time to finish the tail—is almost literally true.

The eating of the roe of this "sprat" caused in Japan, in the year 1884, twenty-three deaths. The victims suffered from severe inflammation of the mouth and throat, strong abdominal pain, formication in the arms and legs, disorders of vision, paralysis, convulsions, and loss of consciousness. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhœa often occurred. Death followed in some cases in a quarter of an hour, but mostly in from two to three hours.

Lacroix describes a case of poisoning through eating the "sprat" which occurred on board a French man-of-war. Out of a crew of fifty men, thirty were dangerously ill and five died. The men experienced strong muscular cramps in the arms and legs, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhœa. Afterward congestion of the brain, delirium, and coma supervened.

Most of the cases of fish poisoning which I have met with in the West Indies have been due to eating various kinds of "snappers," especially the "gray snapper." The tropical species are very numerous and difficult to differentiate, owing to their frequent change of color according to age and surroundings. In 1897, at St. Georges, Grenada, twelve persons who partook of a large gray snapper were attacked with severe symptoms of fish poisoning. A few hours after the meal all these were suffering from pain and fullness in the stomach, followed by persistent vomiting, severe cramps, watery evacuations, weak, thready pulse, and labored respirations. One of the victims was examined by me four months afterward, and he stated that, owing to intense weakness, he had been forced to keep his bed for several months, during which period he suffered from various nervous disorders. He had shooting pains and tingling of the limbs, dimness of vision, and quick, thready pulse.

In 1893 seventeen persons living in Bridgetown, Barbados, were attacked by similar symptoms to those mentioned above. All these had eaten of a fish which had been hawked about by a fisherman, and which was subsequently identified as a "gray snapper," though sold under a more innocent name,

A Spanish naval surgeon, Don Anton Jurado, while serving on