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Common until the beginning of the xixth century, the “mal de langue” or glossanthrax disappeared around 1830. It would manifest itself in herbivorous animals by a necrosis of the tongue within a 24-hour period. The French epizootic of 1763 not only illustrates the management, with both its weaknesses and innovations, of an average crisis in animal husbandry under the Old Regime, it also supports an etiological hypothesis: the disease was due to the toxicity of processionary (“stinging”) caterpillars, and more particularly to erucism.