Horsfall • The Fight uit/i the Fungi 



127 



fore, in Italy also bread is wheat bread 

 —and spaghetti and macaroni are 

 wheat also. 



Wheat grows relatively poorly, how- 

 ever, in Central Europe, which like Vir- 

 ginia is warm and moist in the wheat 

 season. This makes wheat rust bad 

 there. In turn this makes bread in Cen- 

 tral Europe ne bread. Central Europe 

 is a rye-eating area. 



Let us see how St. Anthony's fire 

 was related to this interesting distribu- 

 tion of staple food plants brought on by 

 the action of wheat rust. St. Anthony's 

 fire was a strong malady that afflicted 

 the people in the Middle Ages. The 

 characteristic of the disease was the 

 raging fever that gave the disease its 

 name— St. Anthony's fire. In the Mid- 

 dle Ages it was supposed that the dis- 

 ease could be cured by the intercession 

 of St. Anthony. 



The fever led to mental failure and 

 often to death. The victims suffered 

 initially with nerve tingling in the feet 

 and hands. They might lose the sense 

 of touch. Then gangrene would set in 

 and the extremities might have to be 

 amputated. 



Like the plague, it struck down large 

 numbers of people but, it was not 

 "catching." 



This peculiar disease occurred 

 mainly in central Europe, seldom in 

 Italy or England. In other words the 

 disease was coexistent with the occur- 

 rence of T)'e. It occurred where wheat 

 could not be grown on account of rust. 



It is not surprising, then, that as 

 early as 1630 the French physician, 

 Thullier, recognized that St. Anthony's 

 fire was caused from eating r}'e kernels 

 infected with another plant disease 

 called ergot. Ergot, like wheat rust, 

 liked the warm humid climate of cen- 

 tral Europe. It did not attack T)'e seri- 

 ously enough to curtail the yield disas- 

 trously but it did produce enough 

 diseased kernels to contaminate the 

 flour for bread. 



Of course the disease was most seri- 

 ous in those years when the r}'e crop 

 was the shortest. In those years it was 

 sometimes difficult to get rye that did 

 not contain ergot and the people, es- 

 pecially the poor, had to eat it. These 

 were the years when St. Anthony's fire 

 scourged the population. If wheat rust 

 had not been so serious in the warm, 

 humid areas of central and southern 

 Europe, St. Anthony's fire might never 

 have reached such gigantic proportions 

 and caused so much suffering and sor- 

 row as it did during the Micldle Ages. 



St. Anthony's fire began to decline 

 in the 18th century and was only occa- 

 sionally serious in the 19th century. 

 This decline in severity of St. Anthony's 

 fire was due to the rise of the potato as 

 a source of carbohvdrate in Europe. 

 People began to eat potatoes and re- 

 duce their use of r}'e. Tliis had a 

 salubrious effect on St. Anthony's fire 

 but it led inevitably to one of the most 

 devastating famines of modern times, 

 for which a plant disease was again the 

 cause. 



THE IRISH FAMINE 



Sir Walter Raleigh, visiting in Vir- 

 ginia in the early part of the 16th cen- 

 tury, discovered the Indians cultivating 

 a plant, the name of which he trans- 

 literated as potato. He took it to Eu- 

 rope where it remained a botanical curi- 

 osity for a while. Eventually, the 

 people began to eat it in some volume 

 and the crop spread rapidly across 

 Europe. The peasant farmer of Europe 

 soon discovered that the potato would 

 produce more carbohydrate per acre 

 than either rye or wheat. Slowly in 

 some areas, rapidly in others, the potato 

 replaced the cereals which had been the 

 staple diet of the white men since the 

 dawn of histor^^ Lush fields of green 

 potatoes began to appear all over 

 Europe, instead of the nodding waves 

 of wheat and rye. The potato was 



