I find natural explanations for historical mysteries and legends fascinating. I first heard about the ergot theory of the Salem witch trials about 20 years ago, and PBS did a nice review of it (Ergot Poisoning - the cause of the Salem Witch Trials) on a Secrets of the Dead episode (The Witches Curse) back in 2002. When Linnda Caporael was a senior in college she was writing a paper on the play, The Crucible (which is about the trials). While reading a book about the play, she noted that the author said he couldn’t explain the hallucinations of the people in Salem. As a child, she had read about a possible case of mass ergot poisoning in France, and was able to make the connection.
The most interesting thing about this theory is that seems to explain, not only the Salem case, but many of the instances of witch hysteria in European history. What some scholars think happened is that an early case of mass ergot poisoning occurred, and it was diagnosed by authorities as witchcraft. This became the paradigm, and so from then on everyone knew what witchcraft was, and how to recognize it. If you look throughout European history, and correlate the incidences of witch hysteria with the weather, you find that those cases frequently occurred when the weather was ideal for the ergot infection of rye.
In addition to its immediate effects, ergot also suppresses the immune system, making people more vulnerable to disease, and the symptoms of plague, a disease that was common at that time, are similar to those of ergot poisoning. So, the sequence that might have frequently occurred is they first had good weather for an ergot blight. Then people got poisoned, and therefore had hallucinations and weakened immune systems. Finally they had a major plague outbreak. No wonder they thought they were cursed. (Rye Ergot and Witches, Ergot, See also Witch-hunt -Wikipedia for a sociological perspective on witch hunts.)
Tags: Delusions, Mental Health, Toxins