The earliest record of the now known rotenone-containing plants used for killing leaf-eating caterpillars was in 1848. And for centuries the same plants were used to poison fish.[1] The active chemical component was first isolated by a French botanist Emmanuel Geoffroy in 1895 and called it nicouline, from a specimen of Robinia nicou, now called Lonchocarpus nicou, while traveling in French Guiana.[2] He wrote about this research in his thesis, published posthumously in 1895 after his death from a parasitic disease.[3] In 1902, a Japanese chemist, Nagai isolated a pure crystalline compound from Derris elliptica which he called rotenone, after the Japanese name of the plant roten. By 1930, nicouline and rotenone were established to be chemically the same.[4]