100 kurus equal 1 lira; SYN. piaster, piastre.

Brain disease transmitted by cannibalism
A progressive disease of the central nervous system marked by increasing lack of coordination and advancing to paralysis and death within a year of the appearance of symptoms.
Organic brain disease first reported in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea in the early 1950s. It is a degenerative condition similar to Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Victims suffered rapid physical and mental deterioration, culminating in paralysis, coma and death.
In 1965, US researchers succeeded in transferring kuru to chimpanzees by means of contaminated human tissue. It thus became the first degenerative disease of the human central nervous system shown to be caused by a transmissible agent (see transmissible spongiform encephalopathy). The disease declined in incidence with a change in burial practices (the source of the earlier contamination) and had virtually disappeared by the late 1970s.