234 History of Animal Plagues. 



by some a '^ malignant catarrh/ only lasted a month. It was 

 preceded by an earthquake and an eclipse of the sun.^ 



A.D. 1721. The winter mild, but the spring-time cold and 

 damp, and the remainder of the year wet. Locusts in France 

 and the whole of Italy. Epidemic ergotism in Silesia during this 

 and the next year, and scarlatina in man at St Petersburg, Cour- 

 land, and Lithuania. So notorious was it that diseased grain pro- 

 duced formidable diseases in the lower animals, that while the 

 epidemy continued at Silesia, the King of Prussia issued an edict 

 forbidding the use of rye tainted by the ergot, because it seriously 

 effected horses and pigs} A curious circumstance noted at this 



^ Transactions of the Epidemiological Soc, vol. ii. 



- Hecker. The uncertainty pertaining to the nature of the epizootics of the Mid- 

 dle Ages, leaves us in doubt as to whether some of them might not belong to that 

 class which have a common origin with many of the epidemics of mankind. The 

 ignis sacer, ay-sura, clades sen pestis ig>iiaria, ignis Sancti Antoiii, Saiidi RIai-tialis, 

 BeatcB Virginis, ignis invisibilis, scu i>ifernalis, &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 coincidently with these obscurely-named epi- 

 demics, and when we read that the causes of their outbreak were unfavourable 

 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 15 th and 1 6th centuries has been supposed, with much reason, 

 I think, to have been ergotism, and up to this period it appears to have been de- 

 veloped in a gangrenous form. At this time, however, it changed to the con- 

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

 this disease is shown as it appears in the South and North of Europe. In the 

 South, the gangrenous form is the rule ; in the North, the convulsive form is par- 

 ticularly marked, and very rarely the dry gangrene ; while a few of the epidemics 

 present both characters. The same peculiarity is observable in the phenomena of 

 ergotism in the lower animals during the existence of an epidemy, and it has also 

 been shown to exist by experimentation ; the only exception would appear to be in 

 the case of gallinaceous birds, in which gangrene of the crest or comb is the most 

 constant phenomenon. It is not until the 17th and i8th centuries, that we can with 

 certainty find authors describing ergotism in the epizootic form in animals, and 

 from that time till now observers have been numerous. 



It may be mentioned, however, that Traube, who has described the epidemy 

 of 1770, in Hesse and Hanover, declares that no ergotism existed amongst the lower 

 animals, with the exception of a pig, which he saw affected with symptomatic convul- 

 sions. Horses ate the diseased rye with impunity, and cattle fed on the rye flour with- 

 out inconvenience, tliough not without repugnance. Dogs and sheep, also, escaped 

 save in the little village of Lohe, where seven of the latter died in convulsions. 

 These creatures had pastured in a rye-field after a'harvest made in.very dry weather, 

 when much grain was shaken out of the ear. He did not discover a single instance 

 of abortion ; but in the following spring, the people in the villages where the dis- 



