The rise of ‘supernatural’ products

Picrotoxinin is a compound with a far-reaching history. Very bitter and highly toxic, it occurs naturally in the seeds of a climbing plant called Anamirta cocculus , which grows in Southeast Asia. For centuries, fishers have sprinkled the crushed and powdered seeds into bodies of water to stun fish, making them easier to catch. And practitioners of several different systems of medicine have long used these seeds both topically and internally to treat a wide range of ailments, including motion sickness, scabies, rheumatism, and nervous system conditions. But efforts to bring picrotoxinin into the practice of Western medicine have so far been a bust. In the plant, the compound exists as a 1:1 mixture with a related, less-active molecule, picrotin. Chemists long struggled to separate them, only to find that picrotoxinin is highly complex, unstable, and chemically puzzling. For decades, chemists couldn’t crack its structure or tame its toxicity, and