You are present at the make-shift emergency room in the dark…
You are present at the make-shift emergency room in the dark reaches of the Amazon when your witch doctor (physician) friend receives a semi-conscious patient who has just been brought in with numerous clinical symptoms including nausea, vomiting, muscular weakness and paralysis. The individual is an inexperienced jungle traveler from the United States who suddenly took ill. He appears to have several scraps and puncture wounds on his back, arms and legs which is thought, by his rescuers, to be from loss of balance and disorientation in the rough jungle environment. Your witch doctor friend looks over the patient and administers an acetylcholine receptor antagonist and the patient gets worse! Your friend looks at you and smiles! With some urgency, he then gives the patient a small dose of a pesticide that is sitting on the shelf in his poorly stocked or equipped “clinic,” and the patient improves significantly. The pesticide is Malathion. The witch doctor looks at you and says he knows the cause of the illness in the patient. What caused the patient’s illness? (Later, the patient drools a little bit while he claims to have lost his infestation of body lice!) Answer with one word, the name of the Toxicant.
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