46 PASTORAL AND AGRICULTURAL BOTANY 



form of sorghum in which considerable amounts of prussic acid were 

 detected. Eleven head lived, but four had violent spasms, but recovered. 

 The symptoms were drowsiness, running at the eyes, twitching of the 

 muscles, numbness of the limbs, staggering gait, inability to stand, 

 involuntary passing of the urine and feces. The statement was made 

 that the cattle seemed to all go crazy at once, then stagger like a person 

 intoxicated, fall in all directions and die where they fell. 



Pellagra. Pellagra has in the past been attributed to eating mouldy 

 corn, or maize. Pellagra is a severe and chronic skin disease occurring 

 among the squalid and destitute, who live largely, as in the southern 

 states, upon maize, or Indian corn. The disease begins in the spring being 

 characterized by eruptions over the entire body associated with indigestion 

 and diarrhoea. The skin exfoliates and ulcerates and the person loses 

 flesh. The disease occurs in southern Europe, in northern Africa and 

 among the "crackers" of the southern United States and the inmates of 

 insane asylums and state penitentiaries. The disease has been attributed 

 to eating spoiled corn, to a colloidal silica in the food, but the current 

 view is that it is due to the lack of vitamines in the food. These are 

 present in minute quantities, but are essential to health . When they are 

 absent from food the nutrition is at once affected and a deficiency disease 

 results. Scurvy, beri-beri and pellagra belong to this class. The lack 

 of one vitamine causes scurvy, the lack of another beri-beri, while the 

 absence of a third in certain foods like corn causes pellagra. This seems 

 to be the latest and most satisfactory explanation of the cause of the 

 disease. 



Darnel (Lolium temulentum). The injurious character of this grass at 

 least from its weedy side have been known since early times, for in the 

 New Testament attention is drawn to the tares and the wheat. It is an 

 annual grass with smooth stems growing from 2-3 feet tall with rough leaf 

 sheaths and short ligule. The spikes are 6 to 12 inches long and the 

 spikelets 5-7 flowered. The lower glumes are sharp pointed, equally in 

 length the spikelets, and the lemma is awned, or awnless. 



Symptoms. The grains of darnel, when ground up with wheat and 

 made into flour, show their poisonous effects in producing headaches, 

 drowsiness, giddiness, uncertain gait, and stupefaction, in older animals 

 convulsions, loss of sensation and death. Loliin is the narcotic principle 

 occurring in the pure state as a dirty white, amorphous, bitter substance 

 causing, according to Hackel, eruptions, trembling and confusion of sight 



