102 AWFUL CASES. 



quantity of ergotted rye to supply the urgent 

 calls of his distressed family for food. The 

 farmer gave it him, but added that he was 

 afraid it was not wholesome. Still the calls of 

 hunger prevailed, and in the face of this 

 caution it was eaten. The result was the 

 death of the father, mother, and five of the 

 children out of seven. Two survived, but one 

 of them became subsequently deaf and dumb, 

 and, besides, lost a limb which actually rotted 

 ojBF, precisely in the same way as the^ limbs of 

 the animals which were compelled to swallow 

 the experimental ergot. Professor Henslow 

 has published a series of remarkable extracts 

 from the parish register of Wattisham, in 

 Suffolk, in the year 1762. It records the suf- 

 ferings of several persons from an unusual 

 species of mortification in the limbs, the symp- 

 toms of which were very similar to those of the 

 people under the influence of ergotted rye in 

 France. Indeed there seems a great proba- 

 bility that their maladies were due to the same 

 cause, except that, in the Suffolk cases, the er- 

 got was that of wheat instead of rye. Wher- 

 ever it is perceived in samples of wheat it 

 ought to be carefully picked out, and might be 

 sold to medical men, since in judicious hands 



