BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 



245 



ill the human race, and would submit to no remedies, but :t !s«> live beasts were har- 

 rassed by deadly diseases, I know that sheep, cattle, pigs bosses, and Reese were 

 not free from the contagion. There was also a lack of eoro, not only on account of 

 the inordinate consumption of it by the soldiers, but also from the character of the 

 ground. Some of the corn was so plainly diseased that it was dangerous for man to 

 eat of it. I know also that pease, which formed a great part of the food of the army, 

 were infested and diseased by a small insect, which made a minute hole in them. I 

 never remember seeing such an abundant crop of darnel (tares) mixed with the oat>, 

 and which prevented the making of good oat meal, our chief food, fox it was needless 

 to attempt to labor on it, it Avas so-bad. All grain disappeared, and in its place small, 

 black', horn-shaped masses became apparent, which were highly injurious toman- 

 kind. These were named li St. Martin's corn." A woman was shown To m»- by a sur- 

 geon who suffered from convulsions eyery eleventh day, solely from eating this corrupt 

 grain, and the same surgeon told me he had amputated a leg mortified from the same 

 canse. (An. PI., I, pp. 1GC-107.) 



Iii 1721 the winter was mild, but the spring time cold and damp, and 

 the remainder of the year wet. Locusts in France and the whole of 

 Italy. Epidemic ergotism in Silesia .during this and the next year, and 

 scarlatina in man at St. Petersburg, Courland, and Lithuania. So 

 notorious was it that diseased grain produced formidable diseases in 

 the lower animals, that while the epidemic continued in Silesia the Kino; 

 of Prussia issued an edict forbidding the use of rye tainted by the ergot, 

 because it seriously affected horses and pigs. (An. PL, I, p. 234.) 



Another strange phenomenon was the generally laborious parturi- 

 tions of the domestic animals at this period: 



The sheep in many places lambed with great difficulty, so that the shepherds were 

 obliged to use force to deliver them. Among the cattle one hears of nothing particu- 

 lar beyond the fact that the breeding cows and ewes brought forth their young with 

 great difficulty so that force was obliged to be used to assist them. At Strelitz three 

 fine young cows died from this laborious parturition. They strained so violently that 

 all their internal organs were protruded. (An. PI. I, p. 235.) 



In this connection Mr. Fleming gives the following quotation from 

 Hecker : 



The uncertainty pertaining to the nature of epizootics of the Middle Ages, leaves us 

 in doubt as to whether some of them might not belong to that class which have a 

 common origin with many of the epidemics of mankind. The ignis sacer, arsura, claudr* 

 sea peslis igniaria, ignis Sancti Jnlonii, Sancti Mariialis, BeaUs Firginis, ignis iitcisibilis. 

 sen iiifernalis, &c, would all seem to be employed to denote the same affection, fciid 

 which we have reason to believe was ergotism. It is only by chance, as it were, that 

 wide-spread and fatal diseases among the lower animals are mentioned as occurring 

 coinicidently with these obscurely named epidemies, and when we read that the 

 causes of their outbreak were unfavorable weather, which brought about a diseased 

 condition of the crops and pastures we are only partially enlightened as to the nature 

 of the affection. 



The scorbutus of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has been supposed, with much 

 reason, I tniuk, to have been ergotism, and up to this period it appears to have devel- 

 oped in a gangrenous form. At this time, however, it changed to the convulsive 

 type, which it has chiefly maintained to the present. A curious feature in this disease 

 is shown as it appears in the South aud North of Europe. In the South, the gangren- 

 ous form is the rule; in the North the convulsive form is particularly marked, and 

 very rarely the dry gangrene; while a few of the epidemies present both characters. 

 The same peculiarity is observable in the phenomena of ergotism in the lower ani- 

 mals during the existence of an epidemy, and it has also been shown to exist by ex- 

 perimentation; the only exception would appear to be in the case of gallinaceous 

 birds, in which gangrene of the crest or comb is the most constant phenomenon. 

 It is not until the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries that we can with certainty 

 find authors describing ergotism in the epizootic form in animals and from that time 

 till now observers have been numerous. (Page 234.) 



Convulsive ergotism appeared in mankind in Silesia and Bohemia 

 (1736), and Antoine Soring, the historian of the epidemy, notices that 

 it had been remarked, and the subject had been demonstrated by ex- 

 periment, that spurred rye produces disease in fowls and mammifeious 

 animals, and that when we know positively that animals are affected 



