24 MICROBES, FERMENTS, AND MOULDS. 
individual. In countries where rye bread constitutes 
the chief food of the rural populations, as in Brabant, 
the north of France, Orléannais and Le Blaisois, fatal 
epidemics have been recorded at different times in the 
Middle Ages, under the name of St, Anthony’s fire. 
The first symptoms are a species of intoxication, sought 
after by the peasants, and becoming habitual, like 
alcoholic drunkenness, up to the moment when con- 
vulsions and gangrene set in, and death soon follows. 
Ergot of maize produces analogous phenomena. In 
countries where maize bread and cakes are in use, 
as in Italy and South America, it appears to be the 
cause of the disease improperly called Pelade. Of this 
the shedding of the hair and skin is the first symptom.* 
Fowls which feed on ergotized maize lay eggs which are 
devoid of shell, owing to their premature expulsion 
from the uterus; their combs become black, shrivel, 
and finally drop off; and they even shed their beaks. 
All these phenomena may be easily explained by the 
action of ergot on the muscular fibres of the uterus, 
and of the blood-vessels. 
Recent research has shown that Pelade is identical 
in its cause and external symptoms with the disease 
known in northern Italy and in the south of France as 
pellagra, and in Spain as the rose sickness. The latter 
* We shall presently see that the name Pelade was formerly given 
to another parasitic affection, peculiar to that part of the skin covered 
with hair. These two diseases must not be confounded, notwithstand- 
ing the similarity of name, since they are produced by two fungi 
belonging to different groups. 
