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.TAMES LAW. 
never act on the brain, or the lack of dry gangrene in others 
proves that it can never act on the capillaries of the extremities. 
Similar objections were for a time advanced against its action on 
the uterus in the human female, but such objections are now 
definitely set at rest. In many cases the comparative inactivity 
of the agent was due to the period of harvesting, and in others to 
the loss of power through exposure, while in still other instances 
the susceptibility of the animal and the conditions of its life 
doubtless stood in the way of a positive result. 
Dr. Kluge found that ergot secured before the grains had 
fully ripened was the most effective (Taylor, Med. Jurisp.) It is 
undoubtedly more active in certain years (grown in certain condi¬ 
tions) than in others. The ergot of wheat has been found more 
active than that of rye (McGugin, Iowa Med. Jour.). Ergot long 
exposed to the air, and especially in the condition of powder, 
rapidly loses its medicinal and toxic properties. Again, the uterus 
is subject to periodic excitement corresponding to the periods of 
heat in the impregnated female, and as normal parturition usually 
takes place at one of such periods, so it is probable that ergot 
administered at such a time would be more efficient than during 
the interval. Levi finds that nervous ergotism results from the 
vegetable principles (ergotine, ecboline, &c.) and abortion from 
the phosphoric acid. A lack of this acid would thus mean inability 
to cause abortion (Lo Sperimentale). 
It is unhappily too true that disastrous abortions are often 
coincident with feeding on ergot or smut, and the recent abortions 
of mares fed on ergoted red-top in Central Illinois is only one of 
a thousand such instances. Among recent remarkable instances 
is a widespread abortion which occurred in New Zealand in 1875 
in consequence of the introduction to the colony of rye grass which 
ran largely to ergot (Yet. Jour.). Experimentally, in the hands 
of Diez, ergot produced abortion in pregnant bitches and Guinea 
pigs; in those of Percy and Laurent, in a cow. Zundel sums up 
his experience by saying : 
A very constant symptom of ergotism is abortion in the females, and it is 
upon this specific effect that the therapeutic use of ergot is based; but abortion is 
observed as well after the long-continued prehension of aliments altered by smut 
