“Fear suddenly struck him like a ball of ghostly fire….He attempted to call out, but it was if he had never mastered the art of speech. Panic gripped him, yet he had no way of showing it, for his facial muscles had lost their capacity to register feeling.”
These words, written by Satomi Ton in 1913, describe the last moments in the life of the famous kabuki actor Jitsukawa Endo, who died from fugu, or blowfish, poisoning in 1883.
Despite the fact blowfish poison is 1,250 times more toxic than cyanide, that 1 to 2 milligrams can kill an adult human and that 1 gram is enough to kill 500 people, the Japanese consume 20,000 tons of fugu (Tetradontiforme spp) per year.
While
