youth of twenty who by a
mistake took a half ounce of cantharides. He was almost immediately
seized with violent heat in the throat and stomach, pain in the head,
and intense burning on urination. These symptoms progressively
increased, were followed by intense sickness and almost continual
vomiting. In the evening he passed great quantities of blood from the
urethra with excessive pain in the urinary tract. On the third day all
the symptoms were less violent and the vomiting had ceased. Recovery
was complete on the fifteenth day.

Digitalis has been frequently observed to produce dizziness, fainting,
disturbances of vision, vomiting, diarrhea, weakness of the pulse, and
depression of temperature. These phenomena, however, are generally
noticed after continued administration in repeated doses, the result
being doubtless due to cumulative action caused by abnormally slow
elimination by the kidneys. Traube observed the presence of
skin-affection after the use of digitalis in a case of pericarditis.
Tardieu has seen a fluid-dram of the tincture of digitalis cause
alarming symptoms in a young woman who was pregnant. He also quotes
cases of death on the tenth day from ingestion of 20 grains of the
extract, and on the fifth day from 21 grams of the infusion. Kohuhorn
mentions a death from what might be called chronic digitalis poisoning.

There is a deleterious practice of some of the Irish peasantry
connected with their belief in fairies, which consists of giving a
cachetic or rachitic child large doses of a preparation of fox-glove
(Irish--luss-more, or great herb), to drive out or kill the fairy in
the child. It was supposed to kill an unhallowed child and cure a
hallowed one. In the Hebrides, likewise, there were many cases of
similar poisoning.

Epidemics of ergotism have been recorded from time to time since the
days of Galen, and were due to poverty, wretchedness, and famine,
resulting in the feeding upon ergotized bread. According to Wood,
gangrenous ergotism, or "Ignis Sacer" of the Middle Ages, killed 40,000
persons in Southwestern France in 922 A. D., and in 1128-29, in Paris
alone, 14,000 persons perished from this malady. It is described as
commencing with itchings and formications in the feet, severe pain in
the back, contractions in the muscles, nausea, giddiness, apathy, with
abortion in pregnant women, in suckling women drying of milk, and in
maidens with amenorrhea. After some time, deep, heavy aching in