Wakefield Museums and Castles

Bottle containing three wourali [curare] poisoned arrowheads, 1839 

Collected in 1923

Currently on display at Wakefield Museum in the A World of Good gallery.

Charles Waterton's first 'wandering' in South America involved the area around Guyana. The famous explorer and scientist, Sir Joseph Banks, asked Waterton to investigate rainforest plants.

In 1812 Waterton returned from Guyana with a quantity of a poison made by Indigenous people. It was a very powerful muscle relaxant. The Macushi, an Indigenous people, used it on the tips of their blowpipe darts. They made it from the bark of rainforest trees.

Waterton observed the Macushi people preparing the poison. He recorded and published their techniques, naming it ‘wourali’. Today, we know it as curare.

This is one of many examples of Indigenous knowledge being documented by European travellers during the colonial period. It was often done without permission, or acknowledgement of its cultural significance.

Waterton thought wourali had medicinal uses. It played an important part in the development of modern anaesthetics.

Waterton carried out a series of curare experiments. In the 1830s he poisoned a donkey with curare until it appeared to die. He then used bellows to perform artificial respiration through a hole in the animal's windpipe for several hours. Once the effects of the poison wore off, the donkey recovered completely. This donkey, later named Wouralia, lived at Walton Hall for another 25 years.

These experiments provided an early foundation for the use of muscle relaxants in modern anaesthesia.