The Wikipedia page on ciguatera seems rather poorly edited. I’m interested in two of the more dubious-sounding claims on that page.
First, the origin of the word. The Wikipedia page gives an unreferenced, colorful, and made-up-sounding story about the word that suggests it came from the English seawater. My dictionary says it “probably” came from the Taino-derived cigua, meaning sea snail. But it defines cigua as “a lancewood”, not a sea snail. Anyone know anything about this?
Second, the Wikipedia entry suggests that ciguatera “may be sexually transmitted”. But its reference for this is a medical paper whose abstract describes “two cases [of] painful ejaculation in an affected male and dyspareunia in an unaffected female following her partner’s ejaculation”, which doesn’t sound very convincing to me. (Dyspareunia just means painful intercourse.) What’s the straight dope on sexual transmission of poisons?