TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 119 
others say they have observed this amongst the swine. One fact 
struck him as he was traversing those districts in the spring 
of the following year; namely, that in those villages which still 
contained some sick, he heard great complaints respecting 
the scarcity of chickens, the hens neither laid eggs nor 
showed any inclination to sit; nothing of the kind was heard 
of in the other villages which had not been visited by ergot¬ 
ism. Two hens were sent to him, they presented symptoms 
of spasm. The birds when put on their feet fell on their 
side, hung their heads, and agitated their limbs, and when 
they suddenly got up, their phalanges were spasmodically 
contracted, they sank under the malady in about four weeks; 
no autopsy was made (‘Geschichteder kriebelkrankheit/ 1782). 
We see that in these epidemics the convulsive form predo¬ 
minated, while in France it was the gangrenous which was 
prevalent. The last epidemic from which this country 
suffered was in 1750; the ravages which it made recall 
those of the middle ages. It began in the Sologne, its tra¬ 
ditional hot-bed, and extended to the Landes, Flanders, and 
Artois. The ergot constituted one third of the rye when 
thrashed out, and the domestic animals that fed on it contracted 
the same gangrenous malady as the people (Salerne). To¬ 
wards the last third of the eighteenth century, epidemics of 
ergotism have not been so frequent; the improvement in agri¬ 
culture has contributed much to this happy result, but 
the principal reason is incontestably the general intro¬ 
duction of the cultivation of the potato in the north, and 
Indian wheat (maize) in the south. Notwithstanding these 
alimentary additions, ergotism is not quite extinguished in 
the present century. Courhaut and Bardot observed it in 
France in 1855. Barrier also observed the gangrenous form in 
the department of Isere, the Loire, Haute-loire, Ardeche 
and Rhone. It has reappeared in Russia, Finland, Sweden, 
and some parts of Germany. In the epidemic described by 
Wagner (1831), pigs which had been fed on ergoted rye pre¬ 
sented the same symptoms as those of the human subject 
affected with the epidemic, and Helen saw in Pomerania 
twelve pigs affected with vertigo and convulsions, which 
some hours before had partaken of rye mixed with ergot. They 
groaned and in a plaintive manner emitted anxious cries, the 
posterior parts were paralysed and the animals manifested 
their sufferings by curious contortions. The last epidemic, 
in 1855, which showed itself in Hesse, agrees with that in 
France described by Barrier. The former had, however, 
one peculiarity related by Heusinger, junior. He says that his 
father, the learned professor of the University of Narbourg, 
