Charles accidentally gives a patient curare instead of morphine, almost killing him. While morphine blocks pain receptors, curare is a strong muscle relaxant, often given along in concert with anesthesia so less ether or chloroform needs to be used (too much anaesthetic can lead to death in some patients). Curare must be carefully administered, and if given in the same doses as morphine, could very easily paralyze all of a patient's motor functions (breathing, pulse, etc.) and ultimately lead to death.
The storyline of the missing page is very similar to the Hancock's Half Hour story, 'The Missing Page', transmitted on the BBC 11 March 1960. Hancock goes in search of the identity of the murderer when the novel he's reading turns out to have the last page missing. After many comic trials and tribulations, including trying to reason out the answer with his housemate, he finally finds that the novel was never completed as the author died before its completion.
Writer 'Abigail Porterfield' and her book "The Rooster Crowed at Midnight" are fictional. They were created for the purpose of the plot and do not exist in real life.
When BJ is on the phone with Miss Porterfield, she asked about Dr. Sun Yat-sen. He was a Chinese revolutionary statesman and physician, who served as the first provisional president and leader of the Nationalist Party of China and the Republic of China. He is referred to as the "Father of the nation" in present day Taiwan. He had an instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in the 1911 revolution. Shortly thereafter he went into exile in Japan. Returning in 1923 to reorganize his party and country who were under the control of many warlords. He died in 1925 in Beijing of cancer never seeing his party unify the country. ~ BW