Did a plant disease play a role in the Salem Witch Trials?
Ergot is a fungal disease of small grains, particularly rye, caused by the pathogen Clavicepts purpurea. It enters the plant during pollination, infecting the ovaries and displacing the seeds with an “ergot” or sclerotium (a mass of fungal hyphal tissues that serve as the survival structure). The sclerotia contain numerous chemicals (one of which is lysergic acid, a precursor to the hallucinogenic drug LSD) that can poison animals or humans if consumed, resulting in a condition known as ergotism.
This is one of the few plant diseases that can also cause direct damage to humans.
Ergotism is characterized by a host of different symptoms, depending upon the specific chemicals involved. Some of the more common symptoms include tremors, delusions, prickling sensations on skin, convulsing seizures, hallucinations and violent muscle spasms.
The disease is favored by severely cold winters followed by a cool, wet growing season, and has historically occurred more commonly in areas highly dependent upon rye for sustenance. Although all cereal crops are vulnerable, rye is more susceptible than other cereals due to flowers being open-pollinated and staying open longer, thus remaining exposed for longer periods of time.
Ergot has been recognized since ancient times, and is now known to be responsible for the death of thousands of people. Its presence has also been correlated with dysfunctional human behavior and hypothesized to have altered or influenced certain historical events. One of the more provocative of these events involves ergot’s ties with the concentration of witchcraft trials in Europe and North America.
In early modern Europe, the locations of documented witch trials were clustered in central Europe (alpine France, southwest Germany) and the east coast of Scotland, all areas with cool, wet weather and a reliance on rye as a staple food. Recorded witchcraft persecution trials reached a peak between 1560 and 1660, one of the coldest centuries on record.
Behavioral psychologist proposes Salem Witchcraft Theory
The worst outbreak of witch persecution in recorded history was from colonial Massachusetts in a single year. In 1976, behavioral psychologist Linnda Caporael proposed the concept of ergot poisoning to explain the strange events that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1692.
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