What Do Witches and Fungus Have In Common?

The answer? The Salem Witch Trials and the craziness that gripped a whole society. At least fungus is the newest theory as to this unusual and sudden outbreak of irrational fear and superstition, and I believe it is the most probable one.

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In 1692, as the people of Salem, Massachusetts hunkered down for winter, they cached all the food they could store: dried meat, vegetables, roots, and a coarse bread made from the rye grain they harvested in the fall. Shortly after the New Year, people started to act oddly. Elizabeth Parris, the 9-year-old daughter of the local preacher and her cousin Abigail Williams began suffering from violent fits and convulsions. They went off into long rants, had hallucinations, crawly sensations on their skin, and retreated into dull-eyed trances. There didn’t appear to be anything physically wrong with them, so the rumor spread that some witch in the town put a curse on them.

The normally peaceful and rational people began to panic, and more and more young “victims” were cursed. People started pointing fingers, starting at an old slave named Tituba, and ending with the most respected citizens such as Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn. By September, 140 “witches” had been arrested and 19 were executed. Then in the summer when the crops came in, the demonic fits and the accusations stopped as suddenly as they started. With the passions cooled, the villagers were baffled and horrified at what happened, not knowing what came over everyone. And until now, nobody else did either.

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Several theories have been suggested over the past centuries, but none really answered the question of the madness. But in the 1970’s, Linda Caporael, a psychology major at U.C. Santa Barbara, proposed the theory that it was not hysterics from strict society or land greed that sparked the madness, but the food they were eating during the winter.

“As I began researching,” she later recalled, “I had one of those ‘a-ha!’ experiences.” The author of one of her sources said he remained at a loss to explain the hallucinations of the villagers of Salem. “It was the word ‘hallucinations’ that made everything click,” said Caporael. Years before, she’d read of a case of ergot poisoning in France where the victim had suffered from hallucinations, and she thought there might be a connection.

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Ergot is potentially deadly fungus that infects rye comprised of a compound related to LSD, an illegal hallucinogenic drug. Toxicologists have known for decades that eating bread made from the infected grain can trigger convulsions, delusions, creepy-crawly sensations on the skin, vomiting, and hallucinations. Historians already know that Ergot was responsible for St. Anthony’s Fire and other incidents of mass insanity in medieval Europe. It’s just that not until Caporael wrote her paper was ergot and the insanity in Salem connected.

All the conditions for creating strong ergot was there in Salem: warm, damp weather, and marshy ground all made the perfect breeding ground for the fungus. That summer in 1692 was rather dry, so the fungus died. No ergot, no madness.

The mass hysteria-causing ergot, combined with some overacting on the part of the accusers and the accused all combined to create a scene in history that will probably never be forgotten anytime soon, sparking many books, movies, and historical and psychological debates over the years. It just goes to show how quickly people can get out of hand when they begin to panic and are encouraged by those around them. I have personally observed that if a person is alone, they have a better ability to control themselves in unusual circumstances than if they are with a bunch of people. Everyone gets confused and frustrated and lost and the whole situation disintegrates. That’s what happened in Salem. Without a strong person to guide all the panicked people, they started to go crazy and made the whole situation a lot worse than it normally would have been if ergot was the only problem.

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(via Neatorama)