396 SUPPLEMENT 
great difficulty of respiration, as well as an extreme stiffness, 
as in catalepsy. It cannot be compared to any other cutaneous 
eruption. Although the skin is redder than in cutaneous 
complaints generally, it is thickly sown with points of a still 
deeper red, which are infinitely smaller than a grain of millet, 
and which, viewed with the microscope, appear distinctly to 
be the apertures, or pores of the skin, leaving the subjacent 
tissue quite uncovered. 
Sometimes, this malady is accompanied with nervous 
phenomena, such as convulsions, spasms, and insupportable 
pain. At other times the inflammation of the throat is so 
great that gangrene supervenes. 
Notwithstanding the alarming character of these symp- 
toms, they are not so formidable as might be supposed, and if 
suitable remedies are administered, the cure will be effected 
in about three or four hours, though the numbness will some- 
times last for several days. There have been instances of 
persons who have suffered horribly for three or four days, and 
even of some patients who died of this malady. 
The cause of this singular disorder has been attributed to 
the orange colour of the mussels, to their putrefaction, to their 
leanness, to the phases of the moon, to a particular disease 
of the animal, to the little animals which introduce them- 
selves between its valves, and particularly to a small species 
of crab of the genus pinnothera. But it would seem that 
all these suppositions are erroneous; at least we are told 
by M. de Beunie that the mussel never produces this effect 
but when it feeds upon the spawn of the asterie. This 
spawn, observed in the microscope, appears at first to be 
nothing but a dead and formless mass of jelly; but after a 
few days of hot weather, it appears living, and filled with 
animalcules, which become developed and metamorphosed 
into little asteriz. Itis from the end of April, or the beginning 
of May, to the middle of July, or the commencement of 
