Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/722

 at as particular in its action. The effects now to be mentioned form a peculiar disease, which has often prevailed epidemically in different territories on the continent, and which arises from the spur being allowed to mix with the grain in the meal, and being taken as food for a continuance of time in rye-bread. The affection produced differs much in different epidemics and even in different cases of the same epidemic. Two distinct disorders have been noticed; the one a nervous disease, characterized by violent spasmodic convulsions; the other a depraved state of the constitution, which ends in that remarkable disorder, dry gangrene; and it does not appear that the two affections are apt to be blended together in the same case.

The first form of disease, the convulsive ergotism of the French writers, has been very well described by Taube, a German physician, as it occurred in the north of Germany in 1770-1. In its most acute form, it commenced suddenly with dimness of sight, giddiness and loss of sensibility, followed soon by dreadful cramps and convulsions of the whole body, risus sardonicus, yellowness of the countenance, excessive thirst, excruciating pains in the limbs and chest, and a small, often imperceptible pulse. Such cases usually proved fatal in twenty-four or forty-eight hours. In the milder cases the convulsions came on in paroxysms, were preceded for some days by weakness and weight of the limbs, and a strange feeling as of insects crawling over the legs, arms, and face; in the intervals between the fits the appetite was voracious, the pulse natural, the excretions regular; and the disease either terminated in recovery, with scattered suppurations, cutaneous eruptions, anasarca or diarrhœa, or it proved in the end fatal amidst prolonged sopor and convulsions. Another more recent and very clear account of this form of the disease has been given by Dr. Wagner of Schlieben from his experience of an epidemic which prevailed in the neighbourhood of that place so lately as the years 1831 and 1832. In consequence of unusual moisture and late frosts in the summer of 1831, the rye was so much spurred in many fields that a fifth at least of the pickles was diseased. As soon as the country people proceeded to use the new rye, convulsive ergotism began to show itself, and it recurred more or less till next midsummer, when the diseased grain was all consumed. The usual symptoms were at first periodic weariness, afterwards an uneasy sense of contraction in the hands and feet, and at length violent and permanent contraction of the flexor muscles of the arms, legs, feet, hands, fingers and toes, with frequent attacks of a sense of burning or creeping on the skin. These were the essential symptoms; but a great variety of accessory nervous affections occasionally presented themselves. There was seldom any disturbance of the mind, except in some of the fatal cases, where epileptic convulsions and coma preceded death. Every case was cured by emetics, laxatives, and frequent small doses of opium, provided it was taken in reasonable time, and the unwholesome food was completely withdrawn. The other form of disease, which has been named gangrenous er-*