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The history of curare is both curious and convoluted. A product of South American culture it emerged in the sixteenth century from the mists of antiquity at the same time as quinine, coca, and chocolate. Like quinine, at first came the extract but no plant, and later the plant but no chemical compound. It took more than 300 years and the efforts of many explorers and scientists to resolve the problem. These included Condamine, Humboldt, Brodie, Waterton, Bernard, Dale, Walker, and King. Finally, the pure compound d-tubocurarine was isolated from the liana Chondrodendron and synthesised. Its specific physiological action was blockade of the effect of acetylcholine at the neuro-muscular junction. Such a paralytic poison could be used to kill oneself or others. The bizarre plot to kill the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, during the First World War is described. Fortunately this nefarious plan was thwarted by the Secret Service!

In France, a number of scientists from the fields of chemistry, physiology and surgery have been interested in anaesthesiology. Claude Bernard, who published in 1872 the most exhaustive studies on anaesthesia, was also interested from 1844 in drug curare. He created a methodology, studied pharmacology, including pharmacokinetics and demonstrated the specific action on motor nerves while muscle retained its irritability. It was however A. Vulpian who put forward the idea that curare does not affect the nerve itself but may act on a "linking substance" between nerve and muscle. In these times (1862), Rouget described the end apparatus at the nerve-muscle junction in a way which was finally accepted by German authors. Fifty years later, Couteaux achieved the microanatomic study of the end plate (1909). More recently (1972), Changeux and his team isolated the acetylcholine receptor from the electric organ of the torpedo fish.