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• n  a toxic alkaloid found in certain tropical South American trees that is a powerful relaxant for striated muscles
  curare acts by blocking cholinergic transmission at the myoneural junction

• When all was secure, he injected a curare antidote.
• When used in combination with ether, curare becomes more hazardous, causing one death per 250 patients.
• The Indian arrow poison curare (rhymes with safari) is sometimes used in abdominal surgery and in spastic paralysis, to relax taut muscles.

• tubocurarine

Quotes

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• Raymond Chandler in San Francisco Chronicle
  Raymond Chandler wrote admiringly that Hammett "gave murder back to the kind of people who do it for a reason, not just to provide a corpse; and with means at hand, not with handwrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish."