I am trying to find some scientific information on the the pathology of
spondylus poisoning due to consumption of fresh animal around the Pacific
ocean. This information is for a group of Archaeo-ethnologist, trying to
find the meaning of spondylus shell representation in religious
descriptions and it use in ritual sacrifices in Precolumbian Meso- and
South America. We are out of the field, but ready to enter it.
(1) Is the pathology due to the consumption of red tide dinoflagellates
that parasite spondylus shells?
(2) What is the pathology of this or those kind (s) of poisonning (s)? What
are
the effects of the poisonous spondylus flesh, powder, etc. in small doses?
Do they produce visions? Do they produce stupor, torpor etc?
(3) Is it true that dinoflagellates can be found in symbiosis with shell
fishes, fishes, crustaceans? And that those hosts are protected against the
dinoflagellate toxins?
(4) Is The poisonned fish that is consumed in Japan get its toxicity
because it contains symbiotic dinoflagellates, or does it elaborate it from
its own genome?
(5) Is it true that some japaneses are killed by the eating of raw fish
because they like the taste of the toxic part of the animal or is their
death due only to an absence of knowledge of the fish anatomy?
Does somebody have some reference on this subject? I use Current Content to
get some informations, but I only got ciguereta disease partial
symptomatology. Are there other diseases?
Thanks a lot
Jean-Pierre Herveg, Louvain, <Herveg at bian.ucl.ac.be>
