The Island of the Colorblind

by Oliver Sacks

Reluctant to say goodbye, the three of us stayed up half the night,

cowrie

litany,

The parkinsonism which affected my post-encephalitic patients had been caused by a virus;

the “frozen addicts” who destroyed their midbrains with the designer drug MPTP.

In the 1960s, it had been suggested that the lytico-bodig was also caused by a poison, acquired through eating the seeds of the cycad trees

higgledy-piggledy,

reverie

immurement

goad

halter.”

antipodes

music calmed and cohered her to an amazing extent.

diffidently,

most of these had been used as sources of food, containing as they did large quantities of edible starch (sago), which could be extracted variously from the root, stem, or nut.

Fermented Zamia starch was regarded as a delicacy throughout the Caribbean, where it was consumed in the form of large alcoholic balls.

Every culture which uses cycads has recognized their toxic potential,

In some cultures, they were deliberately used as poisons.

many cultures also regarded cycads as having healing or medicinal properties;

poultice

The use of cycads as food had been independently discovered in many cultures; and each had devised its own ways of detoxifying them.

toxic macrozamin.

bracken

an enzyme in bracken which destroys the body’s thiamine.

parkinsonism after eating the toxic star thistle.

complete recovery, as with acute cycad poisoning in man. But with continued browsing on the plants, neurocycadism would develop;

once the staggers had set in, the damage was irreversible.

fadang

Minamata Bay paralysis,

neurolathyrism

gaily

incommoded

chitons,

cowries,

tetrodons

wrasse

companionable silence

there was to be no massive change until the arrival of Spanish missionaries in 1668, in a concerted effort to Christianize the population. Resistance to this—to forced baptism, in the first place—led to savage retaliation, in which whole villages would be punished for the act of a single man, and from this to a horrifying war of extermination.

they judge that subjection is the worst misery in the world.

farcical

The Japanese occupation was a time of great cruelty and hardship, reminiscent of the conquistadores. Many Chamorros were killed, many were tortured or enslaved for war work, and others fled their villages and farms to live out the occupation, as best they could, in the hills and jungle.

Many more Chamorros were brutally murdered near the end of the war, especially when it became clear that the Japanese days were numbered, and that the island would soon be “liberated” by the Americans.

mealymouthed

Sumay, said to be the finest for snorkelling in Guam.

Kwajalein,

abject

antinomian

gnarled

tottering

One constituent of cycad seeds was cycasin, a glycoside which had been isolated in the 1950s, and this was now reported to have a remarkable range of toxic effects. Large doses caused death from acute liver failure; smaller doses might be tolerated by the liver, but later gave rise to a variety of cancers. While cycasin did not seem to be toxic to adult nerve cells, it was one of the most potent carcinogens known.