62 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 



Italy. Epidemic ergotism in Silesia during this and the next year, and 

 scarlatina in man at St. Petersburg, Courlaud, and Lithuania. So 

 notorious was it that diseased grain produced formidable diseases in 

 tlie lower animals, that while the epidemic continued in Silesia the King 

 of Prussia issued an edict forbidding the use of rye tainted by the ergot, 

 because it seriously affected horses and pigs. (xVu. PL, I, p. 234.) 



Another strange phenomenon was the generallj^ laborious parturi- 

 tions of the domestic animals at this period : 



The slieep iu niauy places lambed with great difficulty, so that the shepherds were 

 obliged to use force to deliver tbem. Among the cattle one hears of nothing particu- 

 lar beyond the fact that the breeding cows and ewes brought forth their young with 

 great difficulty so that force was obliged to be used to assist them. At Strelitz three 

 fine young cows died from this laborious parturition. They trained so violently that 

 all their internal organs were protruded. (An. PI. I, p. 235.) 



In this connection Mr. Fleming gives the following quotation from 

 Hecker : 



The uncertaintj' pertaining to the nature of epizootics of the Middle Ages, leaves u» 

 in doubt as to whether some of them might not belong to that class which have a 

 common origin with numy of the epidemics of mankind. The ignis sacer, arsitra, claude» 

 sen pesfis itimaria, ignis SancU Antonii, Sancti Martialis, Btatw Firginis, ignis invisibiUs, 

 seu infernaJis, &c., would all seem to be employed to denote the same affection, and 

 which we have reason to believe was ergotism. It is only by chance, as it were, that 

 wide-spread and fatal diseases among the lower animals are mentioned as occurring 

 coinicidently with these obscurely named epidemies, and when we read that the 

 causes of their outbreak were unfavorable weather, which brought about a diseased 

 condition of the crops and pastures we are only partially enlightened as to the nature 

 of the affection. 



The scorbutus of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has beeu supposed, with much 

 reason, I think, to have been ergotism, .and up to this period it appears to have devel- 

 oped in a gangrenous form. At this time, however, it changed to the convulsive 

 type, which it has chiefly maintained to the present. A curious feature in this disease 

 is shown as it appears iu the South and North of Europe. In the South, the gangren- 

 ous forui is the rule; in the North the convulsive form is particularly mai'ked, and 

 very rarely the <lry gangrene; while a few of the epidemies present both characters. 

 The same peculiarity is observable in the phenomena of ergotism iu the lower ani- 

 mals during the existence of an epidemy, and it has also been shown to exist by ex- 

 perimentation; the only exception would appear to be in the case of galliuaceoua 

 birds, in which gangrene of the crest or comb is the most constant phenomenou. 

 It is not until the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries that we can with certainty 

 find authors describing ergotism in the epizootic form iu animals and from that time 

 till now observers have been numerous. (Page 2'.H.) 



Convulsive ergotism appeared in mankind in Silesia and Bohemia 

 (1730), and Antoine Soring, the historian of the epidemy, notices that 

 it had been remarked, and the subject had been demonstrated by ex- 

 periment, that spurred rye produces disease in fowls and mammiferous 

 animals, and that when we know i)ositively that animals are affected 

 in this way during epidemics of ergotism, we may conclude that the rye 

 is very rich in ergot, and its action very violent. (An. P. I, p. 2{)2.) 



