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  • Health Sciences Library
    • Guedel Anesthesia Center
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    Richard Cochran Gill and the Search for Curare

    Gill Biography
    Archival Materials


    Photo Gallery

    The Richard C. Gill Curare Collection was donated to the Guedel Center by the wife of the famous ethnobotanist for whom it was named. The collection includes crude curare, the utensils for its production and the containers for its use and storage. It also has blowguns with darts and arrow cases as well as personal adornments made from beads, feathers, hair and beetle wings.

    Bead & feather necklace
    Bead & feather necklace


    Beetle wing necklace
    Beetle wing necklace


    Ceremonial hair & feather necklace
    Ceremonial hair & feather necklace
    Rio Corriente Oriente


    Wood flute
    Wood flute


    ceremonial feather crown
    Ceremonial feather crown


    Gourd
    Gourds of various sizes for tubocurare


    quiver
    Cylindrical wooden quiver holding many arrows attached to a gourd filled with kapok for the arrow ends and a piranha-teeth arrow cutter. For use in hunting the sharpened end of an arrow was tipped with curare while the opposite end was wrapped in kapok (a cotton-like fiber from a kapok tree) and shot from a 9 foot long blow gun.


    pouch
    Detail of woven pouch with strap. Tag: "Cocopouch. Container for Beetle Nuts. Stimulant chewed by Jivaro Indians.

    Richard Gill
    • Arthur E. Guedel, MD

    • Richard Gill

    • Ralph Waters, MD

    • William Neff, MD

    • Abram Elting Bennett, MD
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