292 
JAMES LAW. 
In the slightest cases and while the hoof is not shed, but merely 
detached over a portion of the sole, the toe turns up, grows out 
excessively, and the beast walks on the dew-claws. 
In the worst cases, witli extensive sloughing, the irritation of 
the sores by filth, and the absorption of putrid products, the ani¬ 
mal suffers from a very high fever, with dry mouth, red eyes, dry 
muzzle, excited pulse and breathing, high temperature, suppressed 
secretions, and foetid breath, and dies from septic poisoning. 
One symptom, the presence of sores and even vesicles in the 
mouth, has been a cause of much misapprehension in the recent 
outbreak in the West. Observers had overlooked the fact that 
one of the most constant symptoms of ergotism in all its forms is 
disorder of the digestive organs, and with this disordered innerva¬ 
tion and even an eruption in the mouth and on the skin. Hence 
the owners and even some veterinarians, misled by the great num¬ 
bers attacked, the simultaneous implication of the mouth and feet, 
and the appearance, in one or two instances, of distinct blisters, 
pronounced this tli o, foot-and-moutli disease. This lias been shown 
above to be incorrect, and it is only brought up here to show that 
blisters on the mouth or elsewhere must be recognized as an occa¬ 
sional symptom of ergotism. 
All medical writers on the subject attach a high importance 
to the sense of formication (feeling as if ants were creeping over 
the skin). Bruce says that gangrenous ergotism differs from ordin¬ 
ary gangrene only in its cause (Diet, of Med.), and phlyctense or 
blisters, with colored contents, is an almost constant symptom of 
gangrene; Buck, under gangrenous ergotism, says there are “blebs 
with ichorous contents which soon discharge and leave a gangren¬ 
ous spot of varying size, when dry gangrene is developed” 
(Hygiene); Tabourin notices that in animals there often occurs a 
sero-mucous discharge from the nostrils (Matiere Mcdicale), and 
Zundel says that this discharge is at times sanguinolent (Diet, de 
M4d. et de Chirurg. Yet.). 
These quotations tend to show the liability of the mucous 
membranes and skin to suffer in such cases. This liability to the 
formation of sores and blisters on the mucous membrane and skin 
in ergotism satisfactorily explains the reports made in former 
