Sir, In compliance with you request I have sent you the few notes which I had taken of the cases of some of our ship's company, who, on our late voyage to the South Sea, had experienced the bad effects of eating certain fish of a poisonous nature. I was, perhaps, less solicitous about remarking the minute circumstances attending their illness, as I then believed it was a disorder well known in the West Indies, having frequently heard of people being poisoned, as it is commonly expressed, by eating some particular kinds of fish; but, as far as I have been able to inquire since of those who have been there, or from books, I do not find that any tolerable account either of the disease, or of the means of curing it, has been made public. This being the case, it is almost needless to say, that in treating the disorder we could have no method founded on experience to pursue, and therefore were obliged to palliate the symptoms, from the analogy they bore to those that occur in other diseases.
Poisonous Fish "Akaei" (Stingray) Its Ethnological Investigation
