*gotism, by the French writers, and is known in Germany by the vulgar name of creeping-sickness (kriebelkrankheit), has been minutely described by various authors. In the most severe form, as it appeared in Switzerland in 1709 and 1716, it commenced, according to Lang, a physician of Lucerne, with general weakness, weariness, and a feeling as of insects creeping over the skin; when these symptoms had lasted some days or weeks, the extremities became cold, white, stiff, benumbed, and at length so insensible that deep incisions were not felt; then excruciating pains in the limbs supervened, along with fever, headache, and sometimes bleeding from the nose; finally the affected parts, and in the first instance the fingers and arms, afterwards the toes and legs, shrivelled, dried up, and dropped off by the joints. A healthy granulation succeeded; but the powers of life were frequently exhausted before that stage was reached. The appetite, as in the convulsive form of the disease, continued voracious throughout.[1] In milder cases, as it prevailed at different times in France, nausea and vomiting attended the precursory symptoms, and the gangrenous affection was accompanied with dark vesications.[2] In another variety, which has been witnessed in various parts of Germany, the chief symptoms were spasmodic contraction of the limbs at first, and afterwards weakness of mind, voracity and dyspepsia, which, if not followed by recovery, as generally happened, either terminated in fatuity or in fatal gangrene.[3]
These extraordinary and formidable distempers were first referred to the operation of spurred rye in 1597 by the Marburg Medical Faculty, who witnessed the ravages of the poison in Hessia during the preceding year. Since then repeated epidemics have broken out in Germany, Bohemia, Holstein, Denmark, Sweden, Lombardy, Switzerland, and France.[4] About the close of last century, partly in consequence of the attention of the respective governments being turned to the subject, partly by reason of the improved condition of the peasantry in these countries, and the greater rarity of seasons of famine, the epidemics became much less common or extensive. Nevertheless the creeping-sickness has been several times noticed in Germany since the present century began.[5]
Spurred rye is now generally believed to possess another singular quality, in consequence of which it has been lately introduced into the materia medica of this and other countries,—a power of promoting the contractions of the gravid uterus. This property seems to have been long familiar to the quacks and midwives of Germany; and towards the close of last century it rendered ergot so favourite a remedy with them, that several of the German states prohibited the use of it by severe statutes.[6] It was first fairly brought under the
- ↑ Descriptio morborum ex usu clavorum secalinorum cum pane, 1717. A full extract is given of this work in Acta Eruditorum, An. 1718. Lipsiæ, p. 309.
- ↑ L'Abbé Tessier, Mém. sur les effets du Seigle Ergoté. Hist. de la Soc. Roy. de Méd. ii. 611.
- ↑ Robert, in Rust's Magazin, xxv. 205.
- ↑ Ibid. 200.
- ↑ Ibid. 204.
- ↑ Ibid. 231, 232.
