Out of Aspirin? Why Not Try ‘Taking Frog’ : Anthropology: An adventurous researcher brings back an amphibian secretion used by Brazilian tribe. Doctors believe it could lead to new drugs.

BERKELEY — Most travelers bring home souvenirs of their trips. Anthropologist Katherine Milton tucked frog mucus into her suitcase.

“It’s just second nature to me to always collect,” said Milton, an intrepid explorer who found the substance after watching hunters in an unusual ritual she calls “taking frog.”

The substance is being studied at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. Scientists found a new peptide in the frog secretion, a discovery they published in the November issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Led by John Daly, chief of the bio-organic chemistry lab at NIH, scientists are trying to find out more about the peptide, called adenoregulin. They believe it could lead to new drugs to treat depression and strokes, said Thomas Spande, an organic chemist at the lab.

The frog secretion came to light in 1987, while Milton was studying how indigenous peoples of South America use the forest for food and medicine. Intrigued by burn marks on the arms and chests of Mayoruna Indian hunters, she asked how they got there.

The hunters ran into the forest and “came back with a leafy branch and . . . the most beautiful frog I’d ever seen in my life,” she recalled. “I had no idea what the frog had to do with burns on their body. I thought they didn’t understand--they must think I’m hungry or something like that.”

Things got stranger.

The men proceeded to treat the frog like a torture victim on the rack and began poking at it with a stick.

The frog went into high-defense mode, secreting a glossy substance designed to cut predators’ appetites. The substance was collected by the hunters, who mixed it to a paste with their saliva, burned themselves with a hot twig, scratched off the burned skin with their fingernails and then rubbed the paste in.

Then came the awkward part.

“Within five to 10 minutes they are in dire straits,” Milton said. The men vomited copiously, their eyes and lips puffed up and they were prostrate for about a day.

Once recovered, the men claimed they could hunt all day without eating or drinking much, and their arrows never missed, “which may or may not be true. That’s what they believe and if you believe something, very often it is true,” the anthropologist said.

It wasn’t Milton’s first contact with the unusual. She has studied groups in which men clasp wasp nests to their chests to gird themselves for the hunt.

The practices sound odd, but in the context of their culture, they make sense, she said.

“In many of these rituals, just the shock and the pain may cause the release of certain peptides that in fact make you feel pure, strong, invincible.”

In the Mayorunas’ case, Spande said, the adenoregulin is probably what causes the hunting magic, although “they’re probably getting other peptides along with it that may cause the nausea and vomiting.”

Milton, back teaching at UC Berkeley, can’t wait to return to studying the people whose culture she fears will be lost as they are absorbed into Brazil’s economy.

When she does visit the tropical forest, usually for a few months at a time, the blond, blue-eyed Milton, at 5-foot-7 considerably taller than her subjects, is always a sensation.

“I’m very novel. The children often scream and burst into tears when they see me,” she said. “Plus I do things like get worms living in my face or my fingers or something and they have to be gotten out,” she said cheerfully.

But despite these minor setbacks, “I’m happy as a clam,” she said. “I like living in the forest and I never miss anything.”