TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 117 
to be founded in fact. The celebrated botanist Dodonseus 
attributes the scorbutus which prevailed in Belgium in 1556, 
and w r hich w r as characterised by gangrene in divers parts of 
the body, to deteriorated grain which had been imported 
from Prussia, and he says in another work (‘Historia Fru- 
mentorum/ Anv. 1569), that the bread made from this rye 
determined the malady which the Germans call “schorboet.” 
The gangrenous form of this disease, which was not alto¬ 
gether like that observed in France and Spain, was in the 
sixteenth century changed into the convulsive form. When 
a comparison is drawn between the epidemics of ergotism 
of the north and the south of Europe we find a very re¬ 
markable fact, viz., that in the south the gangrenous form 
is the rule, while in the north gangrene is of rare occur¬ 
rence. While the convulsive form prevails this phenomenon 
is applicable likewise to animals affected with ergotism, 
during the prevalence of the epidemic, and also with those 
which have been the subject of experiment, with the exception 
of the gallinaceous birds, in which gangrene of the comb is 
an invariable phenomenon. The properties of the ergot, it 
seems then, are not the same in the north as in the south. 
Comparative analyses will perhaps decide this, meanwhile we 
may state that it is subordinated by the dose given. In 1840, 
in Finland, the ergot is said to have amounted to one half of 
the grain wdien thrashed; the epidemic developed itself under 
the convulsive febrile form of ergotism, and death often super¬ 
vened in forty-eight hours (Haartmann). From the seven¬ 
teenth century observations have been more attentively made 
as to the phenomena present in animals during the preva¬ 
lence of the epidemics of ergotism ; but the facts are stated 
with a terseness wdiich is not satisfactory to observers of 
pathology of the present time, as they do not furnish the 
proper elements to retrace their medical history. Brunner, 
who witnessed the epidemic of 1694, in Hartz, limits himself 
to the following sentence, “Novi pecora, armenta, sues, equos, 
anseres, quoque nonfuisse a contagione immunia.” Notwith¬ 
standing the contagion, which he admits, Brunner leaves no 
doubt as to the cause, for he says, “Degeneravit quoque secale 
et loco granorum alimentariorum protrusit cornicula nigra.” 
The quoque refers to the oats, which had also degenerated, 
though the character of the change is not stated ; the oatmeal 
produced vertigo in those who ate it. It would have been 
well if the effect on the horses who w r ere fed on it had also 
been shown, but there is a complete silence on this point, 
although distinguished botanists contend that oats are liable 
to be affected with ergot. We must, however, confess that our 
