Was Diet Responsible for the Salem Witch Trials?

[icymist]

Because Halloween is coming up and we're all feeling extra-spooky this time of year, Bon Appetit has dredged up the original thesis from the 1970s that suggested a bad crop of rye was the culprit behind the "bewitched" villagers during the Salem Witch Trials.

Historians have long disputed the cause of the mass hysteria in 1692 that left more than 20 villagers dead and dozens more accused of witchcraft. Possible explanations over the years have ranged from medical hysteria to teenage boredom, but in the seventies an undergraduate named Linnda Caporael linked the villagers' symptoms to ergot, a fungus that grows on rye -- which happened to be the main grain grown by Salem Village at the time.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/2012/10/was_diet_responsible_for_the_s.php

[PADemD]

1. The Day of St. Anthony's Fire

By John Grant Fuller

Years ago, I read this tragic story about an entire village in France that was affected by ergot poisoning in 1951.

http://www.amazon.com/day-St-Anthonys-Fire/dp/0090954602/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350876757&sr=1-2&keywords=St+anthony%27s+fire

[murielm99]

2. I think I have posted before about

the Pied Piper. Some historians think there was a real event behind the story. Ergot was the reason all the children followed the piper.

[siligut]

3. I have always liked this explanation

I also believe that science can explain many other supernatural/paranormal events. I think it was in one of Anne Rice's stories that I first read about ergot. You know how in Ghost Busters their first assignment starts out in the stacks of an old library? Well, there actually is a fungus that has been found to grow on the pages of old books, and it too can cause hallucinations.