“Do, please,” answered Filhiol. “You can handle it alone, all right. I’ve got a job of my own. There’s poisoning present, too. Curaré.”
“Curaré!” exclaimed Marsh, amazed. “That’s most unusual! Are you sure?”
“I didn’t serve on ships in the Orient, for nothing,” answered Filhiol with asperity. “My diagnosis is absolute. There was dried curaré on the blade that stabbed this man. It’s a very complex poison—either C18H35N, or C10H35N. Only one man, Sir Robert Schomburg, ever found out how the natives make it, and only one man—myself—ever learned the secret of the antidote.”
“So, so?” commented Marsh, rolling up his shirt-sleeve. He set out antiseptics, dressings, pads, drainage, and proceeded to scrub up. “We can’t do this work here in the berth. Clear the desk, Ezra,” he directed. “It’s long enough for an operating-table. Make up a bed there—a few blankets and a clean sheet. Then we can lift him over. We’ll strip his chest as he lies—cut the clothes off. Lively, every one! Curaré, eh? I never came in contact with it, Dr. Filhiol. I’m not above asking its physiological effects.”
“It’s unique,” answered Filhiol. He got up from beside the wounded man and approached the chair on which stood the doctor’s bag. “It produces a type of pure motor-paralysis, acting on the end plates of the muscles and the peripheral end-organs of the motor-nerves. First it attacks the voluntary muscles, and then those of respiration. It doesn’t cause unconsciousness, however. The patient here may know all that’s going on, but he can’t make a sign. Don’t trust to this apparent unconsciousness in exploring the wound. Give plenty of anesthetic, just as if he seemed fully conscious.”
“Glad you told me that,” said Marsh, nodding. “How about stimulants, or even a little nitroglycerine for the heart?”
“Useless. There’s just one remedy.”
“And you’ve got it?”
“I can compound it, I think. It’s a secret, given me fifty years ago by a Parsee in Bombay. He’d have lost his life for having given it, if it had been known. Let me have some of your drugs, will you?”