Coturnism is an illness featuring muscle tenderness and rhabdomyolysis (muscle cell breakdown) after consuming

quail Quail is a collective name for several genera of mid-sized birds generally placed in the order Galliformes. The collective noun for a group of quail is a flock, covey, or bevy. Old World quail are placed in the family Phasianidae, and New ...

(usually

common quail The common quail (''Coturnix coturnix''), or European quail, is a small ground-nesting game bird in the pheasant family Phasianidae. It is mainly migratory, breeding in the western Palearctic and wintering in Africa and southern India. With its ...

, ''Coturnix coturnix'', from which the name derives) that have fed on poisonous plants.

Causes

From case histories it is known that the toxin is stable, as four-month-old pickled quail have been poisonous. Humans vary in their susceptibility; only one in four people who consumed quail soup containing the toxin fell ill. It is apparently fat-soluble, as potatoes fried in quail fat are also poisonous. Coniine from hemlock consumed by quail has been suggested as the cause of coturnism, though quail resist eating hemlock.

Hellebore Commonly known as hellebores (), the Eurasian genus ''Helleborus'' consists of approximately 20 species of herbaceous or evergreen perennial plant, perennial flowering plants in the family (biology), family Ranunculaceae, within which it gave i ...

has also been suggested as the source of the toxin. It has also been asserted that this evidence points to the seeds of the annual woundwort ('' Stachys annua'') being the causal agent. It has been suggested that '' Galeopsis ladanum'' seeds are not responsible.

Epidemiology

Migration routes and season may affect quail risk. Quail are never poisonous outside the migration season nor are the vast majority poisonous while migrating. European common quail migrate along three different flyways, each with different poisoning characteristics, at least in 20th-century records. The western flyway across Algeria to France is associated with poisonings only on the spring migration and not on the autumn return. The eastern flyway, which funnels down the Nile Valley, is the reverse. Poisonings were only reported in the autumn migration before the quail had crossed the Mediterranean. The central flyway across Italy had no associated poisonings.

History

The condition was certainly known by the 4th century BC to the ancient Greek (and subsequently Roman) naturalists, physicians, and theologians. The

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

( Numbers 11:31-34) mentions an incident where the Israelites became ill after having consumed large amounts of quail in Sinai. Philo gives a more detailed version of the same Biblical story (The Special Laws: 4: 120–131). Early writers used quail as the standard example of an animal that could eat something poisonous to man without ill effects for themselves.

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

(''On Plants'' 820:6-7),

Philo Philo of Alexandria (; ; ; ), also called , was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt. The only event in Philo's life that can be decisively dated is his representation of the Alexandrian J ...

(''Geoponics'': 14: 24),

Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus ( ; ; – October 15, 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem '' De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, which usually is t ...

(''On the Nature of Things'': 4: 639–640),

Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...

(''De Temperamentis'': 3:4) and

Sextus Empiricus Sextus Empiricus (, ; ) was a Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher and Empiric school physician with Roman citizenship. His philosophical works are the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman Pyrrhonism, and because of the argument ...

(Outlines of Pyrrhonism: 1: 57) all make this point. Central to these ancient accounts is the idea that quail became toxic to humans after consuming seeds from

hellebore Commonly known as hellebores (), the Eurasian genus ''Helleborus'' consists of approximately 20 species of herbaceous or evergreen perennial plant, perennial flowering plants in the family (biology), family Ranunculaceae, within which it gave i ...

henbane Henbane (''Hyoscyamus niger'', also black henbane and stinking nightshade) is a poisonous plant belonging to tribe Hyoscyameae of the nightshade family ''Solanaceae''. Henbane is native to Temperate climate, temperate Europe and Siberia, and natu ...

(''Hyoscyamus niger''). However Sextus Empiricus suggested that quail ate hemlock (''Conium maculatum''), an idea revived in the 20th century. Confirmation that the ancients understood the problem comes from a 10th-century text, ''Geoponica'', based on ancient sources. This states, "Quails may graze hellebore putting those who afterwards eat them at risk of convulsions and vertigo....".

References

External links

{{Poisoning and toxicity Toxic effect of noxious substances eaten as food Quails Bird problems with humans Bird feeding Plant toxins