18 



Report on the Diseases of Wheat, 



Guided by this reference, I find the case excited at the time 

 great attention^ both here and abroad ; and that the symptoms 

 were considered to be precisely similar to those which the ergot 

 of rye produces in France. But it appears from an accurate 

 inquiry which was instituted at the time, into all the circumstances 

 which might in any way be supposed to have brought on the dis- 

 order, that no rye had been used by this family. Rye was, 

 I understand, very commonly the food of the poor^ about that 

 time : none, however, is now used here, and it is not grown in 

 the neighbourhood. The circumstance which seems to have struck 

 the persons who investigated this case as most likely to have been 

 the cause of the misfortune, was the family having lived for some 

 time on bad wheat. They were in the habit of using about two 

 bushels of Revet-wheat weekly; and since Christmas, this had 

 been supplied them by a farmer from the produce of a crop which 

 had been laid, and which he had kept apart from the rest of his 

 stock. The grain was discoloured : it made bad bread, and worse 

 puddings. But it did not disagree with any one of the farmer's 

 family, or others who used it, except one man in the village, who 

 was affected by a numbness in both his hands for about four 

 weeks, and whose fingers' ends peeled at the time the unfortunate 

 family lost their limbs. There is no evidence that the presence 

 of ergot was suspected in this wheat. Indeed, the ergot is seldom 

 met with in any other corn than rye ; and Tessier says, he never 

 saw but one example of it in wheat, of which he gives a figure. 

 Bauer also mentions having never found more than two ears of 

 wheat infected by it. I have, however, found it this autumn in 

 four different fields of wheat, and gathered more than a dozen 

 specimens ; and I find that some of the farmers here are suf- 

 ficiently acquainted with it to satisfy me that it must be more 

 common in wheat than has hitherto been suspected. Upon asking 

 my miller to search for me, he very soon picked out about three 

 dozen ergots from two bushels of Revet-wheat, which had been 

 sent to be ground at his mill ; and he said that he had left at least 

 as many more in the sample. This wheat was grown in the next 

 parish to Wattisham. A very cursory look into the mouth 

 of a sack of gleaned wheat, then at the mill, also furnished me 

 with three or four more specimens. Should the ergot ever prove 

 abundant in any particular crop, it may be worth while to have it 

 picked out, — both for the sake of purifying the sample, and also 

 as a source of profit ; for it is a highly esteemed and valuable 

 medicine in skilful hands, but much too dangerous in its applica- 

 tion to be trifled with by ignorant practitioners. I am, however, 

 speaking of the wheat-ergot, as though it were an equally effica- 

 cious medicine with the rye-ergot ; but I am not aware whether 

 this is really the case. 



