Potato disease was the cause
by Dr. Hermann Bungartz
translated by Pat Cotter
In Ireland one thinks of the years in the middle of the century of the suffering of the famine that the residents of the Island endured for over a decade. The cause was first observed in early summer 1845 first in Flanders and Normandy when the blight of the potatoes spread through the ground and the potatoes became inedible.
The disease spread swiftly to other countries. The worst was felt in Ireland. Here the result was disastrous: countless died in the famine, millions were forcesd to emigrate in order to escape the poverty. It is today clearer that the loss of a single food item can have such a bad effect on an entire population. But in the _____ time most people still got most of their nourishment from one crop and the potato was for the poor __________________ of the ___________________ . In many Irish families they were on the table morning, noon and night.
Also in the district of the upper Ahr and in adjoining parts of the Eifel the potatoe blight appeared in the late summer of 1845. The results were here were not so catastrophic as in Ireland, but also to us brought the potato-sickness unending harm in many families, the already through lacking nourishment after suffering through a bad corn (grain) harvest.
In the Chronicle of the then Burgermeister of Dollendorf, it is written, "The year 1845
It was last updated.Sunday, 22-Jun-1997 18:00:22 MDT