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It has been further argued that Narcisse had broken one of the traditional behavioral codes by abandoning his children<ref name=Guercio1986/> and was made into a "zombie" as a punishment. When questioned, Narcisse told investigators that the sorcerer involved had "taken his soul".<ref name=Hahn07>{{cite web|author=Patrick D. Hahn |url=http://www.biology-online.org/articles/dead_man_walking.html |title=Dead Man Walking: Wade Davis and the Secret of the Zombie Poison |publisher=Biology Online |date=September 4, 2007 |accessdate=2014-05-31}}{{dubious|date=July 2015}}{{better source needed|date=July 2015}}</ref> The instigator of the poisoning was alleged to be Clairvius's brother, with whom Clairvius had quarreled over land and inheritance. He only returned home once he heard of his brother's death.<ref name=Guercio1986/><ref name="Zo">{{cite book|title=The UneXplained|url=https://archive.org/details/unexplainedillus0000shuk|url-access=registration|chapter=Mesoamerica And South America: Zombies|author=Shuker, P.N.|publisher=Carlton Books Limited|year=1996|isbn=9781858681863}}{{page needed|date=July 2015}}{{dubious|date=July 2015}}</ref>
This case puzzled many doctors because Narcisse's death was documented and verified by the testimonies of two American doctors. The case of Narcisse was argued to be the first verifiable example of the transformation of an individual into a zombie.<ref name="autogenerated1987"/> Narcisse's story intrigued Haitian psychiatrist Lamarque Douyon. Though dismissing supernatural explanations, Douyon believed there was some degree of truth to tales of zombies and he had been studying such accounts for decades. Suspecting zombies were somehow drugged and then revived, Douyon reached out to colleagues in America. [[Wade Davis (anthropologist)|Wade Davis]] traveled to [[Duvalier dynasty|Haiti]], where he obtained samples of powders purportedly used to create zombies.<ref name=Guercio1986/>
==Hypothesis and research==
Based on the presumption that tetrodotoxin and related toxins are not always fatal, but at near-lethal doses can leave a person in a state of near-death for several days with the person remaining conscious, tetrodotoxin has been alleged to turn human beings into zombies, and has been suggested as an ingredient in [[Haitian Vodou]] preparations.
This idea appeared in print as early as the 1938 non-fiction book ''Tell My Horse'' by [[Zora Neale Hurston]], which reported multiple accounts of purported tetrodotoxin poisoning in Haiti, by a
The concept was subsequently popularized in the 1980s by ethnobotanist [[Wade Davis (anthropologist)|Wade Davis]].<ref>Wade Davis, 1985, ''[[The Serpent and the Rainbow (book)|The Serpent and the Rainbow]]''.{{full citation needed|date=July 2015}}</ref>
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While in these popular accounts, and in Haiti, tetrodotoxin is thought to have been used in [[Haitian Vodou|voodoo]] preparations, in so-called [[zombie]] poisons, subsequent careful analysis has repeatedly called these accounts and early analytical studies into question on technical grounds; moreover, they have failed to identify the toxin in any such preparation,<ref name=Kao86>Kao, C.Y., and T. Yasumoto, 1986, "Tetrodotoxin and the Haitian zombie." ''Toxicon'', '''24''': 747–49.</ref><ref name=Kao90>Kao, C.Y., and T. Yasumoto, 1990, "Tetrodotoxin in 'zombie powder.'" ''Toxicon'', '''28''': 29–132.</ref><ref name="Hines">Terence Hines, 2008, "Zombies and Tetrodotoxin," ''Skeptical Inquirer'' (online), Volume 32.3, May/June 2008, pp. 60–62, see [https://www.csicop.org/si/show/zombies_and_tetrodotoxin], accessed 25 July 2015.</ref> such that discussion of the matter of tetrodotoxin use in this way has all but disappeared from the primary literature since the early 1990s. Kao and Yasumoto concluded in the first of their papers in 1986 (and remained unswerving on the matter in their later work) that "the widely circulated claim in the lay press to the effect that tetrodotoxin is ... causal agent" in a "zombification process" is, in their view, "without factual foundation."<ref name=Kao86/>{{rp|748}}
Kao, of the [[State University of New York]],
Davis responded formally to the charges, arguing the variability of the preparations (as cause for Kao's inability to find the toxin in any) and possible ineptitude in dissolving the toxin by the otherwise admittedly expert Kao, and speculating on the presence of "other ingredients" in the preparations to "enable transport across the [[blood–brain barrier]]" thus providing the needed "reduction of three orders of magnitude" of the amount needed to result in the claimed effects, and arguing that "only when the bokor … causes others to believe the victim is dead and then revived" do his efforts become apparent, and that only a single "success … would be sufficient to support the cultural belief in the … phenomenon."<ref name=DavisScienceLttr/> As of 1990, his critics were unpersuaded,<ref name=Kao90/> and no literature to support the original contentions has yet appeared as of 2015, although lively popular description, especially on the web, continues.<ref name=Hahn07/><ref name="Zo"/><ref name=Wood00/>
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