78 THE POISONOUS 



a disagreeable creeping sensation, or formication, on the 

 hands and feet, which passed into pricking pains, and an 

 exceedingly painful sensation under the nails. Some per- 

 sons were afflicted with swollen hands and feet. In many 

 the countenance was bloated and livid, the heart "trembled 

 and palpitated," and lividness and rapid decomposition 

 evinced the tendency to sphacelation. The plague, with 

 its symptoms, its abscesses, and its mortification, might 

 be taken for a case of fungous poisoning in its more in- 

 tense forms. 



You may now, gentlemen, turn to another curious effect 

 of the poison by the fungi: I mean, periodicity. Many 

 authors mention, among the phenomena, intermittency , 

 or remittency. The most singular of such cases is cited 

 by Christison, who tells us that a whole family, consisting 

 of a woman and her four children, were attacked by a 

 tertian fever, by living exclusively for four months on 

 edible mushrooms. The peculiar cause of the fever was 

 made more manifest by the fact, that the husband of the 

 woman, who lived on other fare, escaped all disease ; while 

 a cutaneous eruption and subsequent gangrene of the ex- 

 tremities attacked finally those who had the fever. West- 

 erhoff observed in those who were poisoned by mouldy 

 food, an intermittent somnolency, which he terms a re- 

 markable feature of the case. M. Gassand saw cases of 

 ergotism where the sensations either of heat or cold were 

 intermittent. 



Several other writers mention this feature. The mental 

 disturbance intermitted in one case, inflamed eyes in an- 

 other, and all the phenomena in a third. A young woman 

 who ate a dish of Agaricus clypeatus, and was attacked with 

 nausea, vomiting, bilious stools, and a frequent pulse, had 

 a marked remission on the fourth day. The patient was 



