402 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
ergotism, one of the most distressing diseases 
with which the human frame is affected. Pro- 
fessor Henslow, by way of experiment, gave it to 
various domestic animals, mixed with their food, 
when it was invariably found to produce sickness, 
gangrene, and inflammatory action so intense, that 
the flesh of the extremities actually sloughed away. 
It is not, therefore, unlikely to have been the un- 
suspected source of several strange morbid dis- 
orders which have prevailed from time to time 
among the poor in those places where rye is the 
staple grain, and which have proved so perplexing 
to the physician. Professor Henslow published 
a series of remarkable extracts from the parish 
register of Wattisham, in Suffolk, in the year 
1762, recording the sufferings of several persons 
from an unusual kind of mortification of the limbs, 
which was produced, in all likelihood, by the use 
of spurred rye as food. In some districts in 
France, gangrenous epidemics, accompanied by 
the most dreadful symptoms, used to be very pre- 
valent in certain seasons ; but owing to the pains 
taken to prevent ergot being sent to the mill and 
ground up with the flour, they are now almost un- 
known. Sheep and cattle allowed to browse in 
meadows where ergot exists not unfrequently slip 
their young, and become violently ill; and pigs, 
running about certain lanes and hedgerows where 
