This is the fittest opportunity for noticing certain injurious effects sometimes observed from the use of spoiled or mouldy bread. On the continent repeated instances have occurred of severe and even dangerous poisoning from spoiled rye-bread, barley-bread, and even wheat bread. Several instances have been observed of horses having been killed in a short space of time with symptoms of irritant poisoning after eating such bread with their ordinary food.[[2491]] And Ur. Westerhoff has given an account of its effects on two children and several adults. In children the symptoms were redness of the features, dry tongue, frequent weak pulse, violent colic pains, urgent thirst and headache, and subsequently vomiting and diarrhœa, alternating with great exhaustion and sleepiness. The bread in these instances was made of rye.[[2492]] It appears that in bread so spoiled a variety of mucedinous vegetables are developed, especially the Penicillium glaucum and P. roseum; and it is imagined by some, that this circumstance may account for the deleterious effect of the bread.[[2493]]
Of the Effects of Darnel-Grass.
Grain is also rendered more or less injurious by the accidental or intentional admixture of a variety of foreign substances, by which, in common speech, it is said to be adulterated. The subject of the adulteration of grain is a very important topic in medical police. But as this practice seldom imparts to the grain qualities decidedly poisonous, the consideration of it would be misplaced here. One variety, however, the accidental adulteration of flour with the seeds of the Lolium temulentum or darnel-grass calls for some notice; for it may occasion not only symptoms of poisoning, but even also death itself.
This is the only poisonous species of the natural order of the grasses. The seeds appear to be powerfully narcotic, and at the same time to possess acrid properties. Seeger gave a dog three ounces of a decoction of the flour, and observed that it was seized in five hours with violent trembling and great feebleness, which were succeeded in four hours by sopor and insensibility; but it recovered next day.[[2494]]
When mixed with bread and taken habitually by man, darnel-grass has been known to cause headache, giddiness, somnolency, delirium, convulsions, paralysis, and even death. M. Cordier found by experiment on himself, that very soon after eating bread containing darnel-grass flour, he felt confusion of sight and ideas, languor, heaviness, and alternate attacks of somnolency and vomiting. The bread was commonly vomited soon after he ate it.[[2495]] Seeger has related some cases in which the somnolency was much more deep; and states that general tremors are almost always present.[[2496]] A few years ago almost the whole inmates of the Poor’s House at Sheffield, to the amount of eighty, were attacked with analogous symptoms after breakfasting on oatmeal porridge; and it was supposed that the meal had been accidentally adulterated with the lolium. The chief symptoms were a piercing stare, violent agitation of the limbs, quivering of the lips, frontal headache, confusion of sight, dilated pupil, small tremulous pulse, twitches of the muscles, and palpitation. In twelve hours all of the persons attacked were well but two, who had strong convulsions in the subsequent night, but also eventually recovered.[[2497]] A similar accident is mentioned by Perleb, as having happened at Freyburg in the House of Correction. The inmates, soon after eating bread made with new flour, were attacked to the number of forty, with loss of speech and somnolency; and for some days afterwards they complained of sickness.[[2498]] The accident was ascribed to darnel-grass. In a recent instance which happened in the workhouse of Beninghausen, and which was traced to the lolium, seventy-four people were attacked with giddiness, tremor, convulsions, and vomiting. Those who had led a dissipated life suffered most, and children least of all.[[2499]]
Sometimes this poison appears to excite symptoms of intestinal irritation, without acting as a narcotic. A small farmer near Poicters in France saved five bushels of the seed from a field of wheat,—had it ground with a single bushel of wheat, and afterwards made bread with the mixture for his own family. He himself, with his wife and a servant, began to eat the bread on a Thursday; but the two last were so violently affected with vomiting and purging, that they refused to continue taking it. He persevered himself, however, till on the Sunday evening he became so ill that his wife wished to send for medical aid. This he refused to allow, and next day he expired after suffering severely from fits of colic.[[2500]]
Bley of Bemburg has examined chemically the grain of lolium. He obtained from it a bitter extractive matter, without any characteristic chemical properties, but which killed a pigeon. The seed has a very feeble bitterish taste. Bley maintains that its poisonous properties are essential to it, and not incidental, as some think.[[2501]]
Of the Effects of certain Poisonous Leguminous Seeds.
Among the injurious substances with which various grains are apt to be accidentally mixed from their growing together, two leguminous plants may be here shortly mentioned, as they have often been the source of disagreeable accidents on the continent.
In the department of the Cher and Loire in France, severe effects have been traced to bread made partly with flour of the Lathyrus cicera. M. Desparanches, in a report to the Prefect of the Department, says this flour occasionally forms one-half of that of which bread is made in some parishes; that it produces sometimes sudden incapability of walking, sometimes imperfect paraplegia and pain, with a draggling gait and turning in of the toes, and sometimes also slight convulsive movements of the thighs and legs.[[2502]] Similar effects have been traced to this substance formerly. Virey says it has been known to produce in particular a singular stiffness and state of semiflexion of the knee-joint, compelling the individual to move the limbs in one rigid mass.[[2503]]