LE MAL DES ARDENTS.
Towards the end of the tenth century a new epidemic appeared in Europe, the ravages of which spread terror among the people of the Occident; this disease was known by the name of mal des ardents, sacred fire, St. Anthony’s fire, St. Marcell’s fire, and hell fire.
This great epidemic of the Middle Ages is considered by many modern writers as one of the forms of ergotism, notwithstanding the contrary conclusions arrived at by the Commission of 1776, composed of such men as Jussieu, Paulet, Saillant, and Teissier, who were ordered to report as to the nature of the disease by the Royal Society. According to the work of this Commission the mal des ardents was a variety of plague, with buboes, carbuncles and petechial spots, while St. Anthony’s fire was only gangrenous ergotism. This is a remarkable example of the confusion into which scientific facts were allowed to fall through the fault of careless authors. It is in such instances that we may estimate the importance of history. We find in the “Chronicles of Frodoard,” in the year 945, the following: “The year 945, in the history of Paris and its numerous suburban villages, a disease called ignis plaga attacked the limbs of many persons, and consumed them entirely, so that death soon finished their sufferings. Some few survived, thanks be to the intercession of the Saints; and even a considerable number were cured in the Church of Notre Dame de Paris. Some of these, believing themselves out of danger, left the church; but the fires of the plague were soon relighted, and they were only saved by returning to Notre Dame.”
Sauvel, the translator of Frodoard, remarks that at this epoch the Church of Notre Dame served as a hospital for the sick attacked by the epidemic, and sometimes contained as high as six hundred patients.
Another historian of the time was Raoul Glaber,[15] who mentions that “in 993 a murderous malady prevailed among men. This was a sort of hidden fire, ignis occultus, the which attacked the limbs and detached them from the trunk after having consumed the members. Among some the devouring effect of this fire took place in a single night.
“In 1039,” continues our author, “divine vengeance again descended on the human race with fearful effect and destroyed many inhabitants of the world, striking alike the rich and the poor, the aristocrat and the peasant. Many persons lost their limbs and dragged themselves around as an example to those who came after them.”
In the Chronicle of France, from the commencement of the Monarchy up to 1029,[16] the monk Adhemar speaks of the epidemic in the following terms: “In these times a pestilential fire (pestilential ignis) attacked the population of Limousin; an infinite number of persons of both sexes were consumed by an invisible fire.”
Michael Felibien, a Benedictine friar of Saint Maur, also left notes on the epidemic of gangrene. He states in his History of Paris: “In the same year, 1129, Paris, as the rest of France, was afflicted by the maladie des ardents. This disease, although known from the mortality it caused in the years 945 and 1041, was all the more terrible inasmuch as it appeared to have no remedy. The mass of blood, already corrupted by internal heat which devoured the entire body, pushed its fluids outwards into tumors, which degenerated into incurable ulcers and thus killed off thousands of people.”
We could make many more citations, derived from ancient writers, but we think we have quoted enough authors to prove that the mal des ardents was only the plague confounded with the symptoms known as gangrenous ergotism. Could it not have been a plague of a gangrenous type? We cannot positively affirm, however, that it had no connection with poisoning by the sphacelia developed in grain, particularly on rye. Its onset was sudden, and often very rapidly followed by a fatal termination. The mal des ardents had no prodroma with general symptoms and marked periods, as in gangrenous ergotism, but it had, to the contrary, an irregular march, rapid in its evolution, “devouring,” as Mezeray says, “the feet, the arms, the face, and private parts, commencing most generally in the groin.”