[ 196] 



On the Hoof disease from eating hay affected with 

 Ergot. By James Mease, M, D, 



Read March 15th, 1825. 



In the year 1803, the late Joseph Cooper of New 

 Jersey informed me, that he had observed the hay made 

 of the natural green grass, or spear grass, [poa viridis) 

 growing on his fine meadows, on Petty's island, made 

 by banking out the Delaware, to be occasionally affected 

 •with a black spear, about one fourth, or half an inch in 

 length, somewhat resembling the ergot in rye, and that 

 cattle eating such hay, became affected with a disease 

 in their hoofs, causing them sometimes to drop off. He 

 ascribed the morbid production in the grass, to neglect 

 in supplying it with water from the river by means of 

 sluices, during a dry season. Upon my mentioning the 

 facts soon after, to the late William Rush of Philadel- 

 phia, an extensive grazier, he confirmed them from his 

 own observations at Blooming Grove, near Gray's Court, 

 in the state of New York, in the winter succeeding the 

 very dry summer of the year 1793. The hay was the 

 produce of a bog meadow, it is presumed therefore, that 

 it was made from the same natural grass that grew in the 

 meadows of Joseph Cooper. 



Some years af.er, Mr. W. T. Woodman of Tre- 

 dyffrin township, Chester county, Pennsylvania, commu- 

 nicated to me an account, in the following letter, of a 

 similar disease, and from a like cause, among his father's 

 cattle. 



Sir, 

 Having observed the remark, in the Port Folio for May, 

 1815, in the review of the third volume of the Memoirs of 



