The Cause of Convulsive Ergotism

Abstract

By feeding monkeys on healthy rye, wheat and other cereal and leguminous seeds convulsive and paralytic symptoms similar to those of convulsive ergotism in man can be produced.Large amounts of cold-water extracts of the grains given to monkeys per os may cause the symptoms acutely, just as large meals of rye bread have occasionally been reported to do in man.Salts of phytic acid and decomposition products from it, isolated from all these grains and given to monkeys by the stomach or hypodermically, occassion symptoms exactly similar to those caused by feeding the grains.The occurrence of poisoning when these grains are consumed as food is partly a question of the quantity consumed and partly a question of the ability of the consumer to break down in the bowel the poisonous phytates and so render them innocuous. If they are not fully broken down they are absorbed and act as poisons to the nervouse system.The pathological lesions in the nervous system of monkeys are the same as those which are described as occurring in convulsive ergotism in man.Convulsive ergotism is not a “deficiency” disease, nor is it ergot disease, but is caused by poisons normally present in rye and other grains.