SECALE CORNUTUM. 741 



The use of flour containing a considerable proportion of ergot, gives 

 rise to a very formidable disease, distinguished in modern medicine as 

 Ergotism, but known in early times by a variety of names, as Morbus 

 sjMsmodicus, convulsivus, rruilignus, ejndemicius vel cerealis, Rapkania, 

 Convulsio raphania ^ or Ignis sancti Antonli. 



Some of the malignant epidemics which visited Europe after seasons 

 of rain and scarcity duriog the middle ages have been referred with 

 more or less of probability to ergot-disease.^ The chronicles of the 

 6th and 8th centuries note the occurrence of maladies which may be 

 suspected as due to ergotized grain. There is less of doubt regai-ding 

 the epidemics that prevailed from the 10th century and were frequent 

 in France, and in the 12th in Spain. In the year 1596 Hessen (Hessia) 

 and the adjoining regions were ravaged by a frightful pestilence, which 

 the Medical Faculty of Marburg attributed to the presence of ergot in 

 the cereals consumed by the population. The same disease appeared in 

 France in 1630, in Voigtiand (Saxony) in the years 1648, 1649, and 

 1675 ; again in various parts of France, as Aquitaine and Sologne, in 

 1650, 1670, and 1674. Freiburg and the neighbouring region were 

 visited by the same maladj'^ in 1702 ; other parts of Switzerland in 

 1715-16 ; Saxony and Lusatia in 1716 ; many other districts of Germany 

 in 1717, 1722, 1736, and 1741-2.' The last epidemic in Europe occa- 

 sioned by ergot appears to be that which, after the rainy season of 

 1816, visited Lorraine and Burgundy, and proved fat^il to many people 

 of the poorer class. Ergot disease is sometimes observed in Abyssinia 

 at the present day,^ and a few cases of it have even been lately recorded 

 in Bavaria.^ 



Formation — The true nature of ergot has long been the source of 

 a great diversity of opinion, not set at rest by the admirable researches 

 of L. R. Tulasne, from whose Memoir e sur I' Ergot des Glumacees,^ the 

 following account is for the most part extracted. 



The formation of ergot often affects only a few caryopsides in a 

 single ear; sometimes, however, more than twenty. In the former 

 case, the healthy development of the other caryopsides is not prevented, 

 but if too many are attacked, the entire ear decays. The more isolated 

 ergots generally grow larger, and attain their greatest size on rye which 

 springs up here and there among other cereals. 



The first symptoms of ergot-formation is the so-called honey-dew of 

 rye, a yellowish mucus, having an intensely sweet taste, and the peculiar 

 disagreeable odour frequently belonging to fungi. Drops of this mucus 

 show themselves here and there on the ears in the neighbourhood of 

 diseased grains, and attract ants and beetles of various kinds, especially 



^ Vereiva, Elem. of Mat. Med. ii. (1850) et de Phys. mid. ann^e 1776. 260-311. 



1007. 417. 



2 Consult Haser, Lehrbuch der Geschkhte * Th. von Heuglin, Seise nacJi Ahessimen 



der Medicin und der Volkskrankheiten, 1845. etc. Jena, 1868. 180. 



i. 256. 830, ii. 94 ; C. F. Heusinger, Be- " Wiggers and Husemann, Jahreahericht 



cherches de Pathologie comparie, Cassel, i. for 1870. 582. 



(1853) 543-554; Merat et De Lens, Diet. ^ Ann. des Sciences not., Bot, xx. (1853) 



Mat. Med. iii. 131, vii. 268. 1-56 and 4 plates. — More recent observa- 



' Tissot of Lausanne, Phil. Trans. Iv. tions will be found in St. Wilson's paper, 



(1766) 106. — See also Dodart, M^i. de Trans, of the Bat. Society of Edinburgh, 



FAcad. B. des Sciences, x., ann^es 1666-1699 xli. (1876) 418-434 with figures ; and espe- 



(Paris, 1730) 561 ; Hist, de la Soc. Boy. de cially in Lnerssen (quoted at p. 735) 156, 



M4d., ann^e 1776. 345 ; and Mem. de M4d. et seqq. 



