The Flying Death: Poison, Plunder, and the Quest for a Miracle Medicine in the Amazon

A dramatic tale of explorers of the 1930s racing to find and harvest a poisonous Amazon vine, and how their work plundered local tribes and spurred the invention of new medicines.

In the fall of 1938, a young, frail American explorer set off down a river in the western Amazon in search of curare, a poison he thought might save his life. Richard Gill had learned that local tribes used curare-laced blow darts to kill animals, but it was also potentially a cure for many ailments, including his own. He also thought he could make a fortune by connecting the knowledge of two worlds. Obsessed with curare, he raced to make deals with Indigenous poison masters in the Amazon and pharmaceutical companies back home, even as his Russian-born rival Boris Krukoff sought to do the same.

In The Flying Death, the historian Matt O'Hara asks who and what we are willing to sacrifice in the name of discovery and profit. O'Hara brings to life Gill's epic quest, a stranger-than-fiction true story that moves from unexplored territory in the Amazon to rogue medical trials and cutthroat corporate boardrooms in the United States. Navigating treacherous terrain and politics, Gill and Krukoff successfully created a veritable curare–industrial complex, as the plant became a key element in shock therapy, transformed surgery in the United States and across the globe, and eventually led to a Nobel Prize. The Flying Death offers a thrilling ride across Indigenous knowledge, scientific exploration, and exploitation, unearthing a story of discovery that poses searching questions about the price of progress, who pays it, and who gets credit.