Salem_Witch_Trials

Salem witch trials Sabrina Armstrong Com/220 April 24, 2010 G.L. Beck Salem witch trials: a drug induced hysteria What happened in Salem in 1692' The people involved in the Salem witch trials were more than just names, dates and places; they were people with lives and families as well. The Salem witch trials started with three girls falling ill with mysterious symptoms that the doctors could not explain by medical science during that point in history. Many people still wonder today why the hysteria took place. Some people believe that, the hysteria was a product of children’s self-delusions. Other people believe that while, the hysteria fueled the Salem witch trials it was not the cause of the trials. A handful of people instead believe that it was drug induce by a toxic fungus called ergot. Ergot is a mold often found on plants such as rye, wheat, and barley, which during the witch trials and still today people made bread from these plants. St. Anthony’s fire is also another name for ergotism. Ergot is a type of food poisoning; that during; Medieval Times was frequent. Although ergot does not include LSD, it does contain ergotamine, which is the hallucinogen that LSD derives from. The evidence suggests that digesting food with ergot in it will poison people and make them sick; this was a major aspect in the Salem trials but no one realized this until recently, when historian and behaviorist psychologist Linnda Caporael did a study on the trials (Stefko, 2010, para 1-3). According to Caporael, the witch-hunts began when people showed signs of developing ergot poisoning but people believed witchcraft was the cause of their affliction because during that point in history people often thought that it was witchcraft when they could not physically explain it (Caporael, 1976, para. 10). Historian Mary Matossian backs up Caporael’s conjecture as well. Caporael and Matossian both have studied the temperature, the rainfall; and the crops that grew in areas in, which people found ergotism and they both discovered that a large proportion of witchcraft trials occurred in these same areas during that point in history when the grain grew there (Stefko, 2010, para 1-3). People found a 2000-year-old man in a bog; that for some reason time preserved him completely because of the soil the people found him. He seemed like he died very recently. The scientists examined the stomach, intestines, and had tests done on their contents, which the scientists discovered that the man's last meal had been a kind of homemade soup made from seeds and vegetables. Barley was one of the ingredients that he digested contained large amounts of ergot fungus, which found on rotted rye. This proves that ergot did in fact exist at that in point in history when the witchcraft hysteria took place (Tollund man, 1989, para 6). Before the Salem witch trials, there was another outbreak of witch hysteria. On November in 1589, Jane Throckmorton, fell ill with strange symptoms that the doctors could not explain, Jane accused Alice Samuel of being a witch. The Throckmorton family accused Alice’s husband and daughter of witchcraft as well. The bishop tried Alice and her family in 1593 on April 5 for witchcraft; they found them guilty and hanged them (Coventry, 2010, p. 17). The afflicted in this specific case ate from the same bakery, ate the same tainted bread, which people believe had ergot in it. In addition, during the Salem witch trials as evidence, the courts would give dogs the bread that the girls ate to see if they would act out in the same manner, which of course, they would because the bread had ergot in it. The children who had been afflicted ate food from the same bakery, which had ergot in it. Only the people who ate from that bakery showed signs of affliction. These symptoms are the same, which people in the sixties claimed which; they suffered from when they had been on an LSD acid trip. People did not identify at the time that the symptoms were because of food poisoning. Some of the signs that people experience are having trouble controlling their bodily functions. Other symptoms were causing his or her body to move nonstop with convulsions, and their eyes rolled in the back of their heads sometimes, while they were often unable to speak as well. At other times, their symptoms described as dizziness and confusion as well. In some extreme cases the whole body shakes as if by an unseen force was pulling his or her body off the ground. People have described feelings of intense warmth, or frozen, including itchy, and scratchiness feelings too. People believed that they had burning sensations on their skin and a thousand hands were pinching him or her and touching their entire body. People would suffer from delusions, panic attacks, and intense dehydration as well (“Ergot poisoning” 1998, para 3). There were outbreaks of ergotism poisoning as late as the 1950’s still in France. High temperatures could not fracture the active dangerous ingredients of ergot; for that reason, it existed in many different baked goods from contaminated grains, rye, or wheat. The foremost epidemic of ergot poisoning happened in France in near the beginning of the 1950s. In 1951, just about 135 citizens of France had to be hospitalized and six even died from the ergot poisoning. It occurred in the French town of Pont St. Esprit. The people that ate the bread, which was made from mildew-tainted rye, saw awful things. The infected people saw atrocious visions of strange animals attacking them; they also saw tigers and snakes turning into beasts. Experiences with an epidemic of this magnitude does offer a much clearer picture into what the girls in Salem village may have gone through during their ordeal. The symptoms the people of France experienced while under the effects of ergot poisoning were slightly different hallucinations than the Salem girls but the symptoms were exactly, the same as the guy that invented the drug. The French victims claimed ‘they were being chased or attacked by hideous beasts’, afraid of dark places and they said they believed that their body did not feel like their own. They also felt burning sensations (commonly known as St. Anthony’s fire) in the extremities & the scalp. It is not that tough to see in your mind's eye how an occurrence of ergot poisoning; or even a small stage of contamination; may perhaps show the way to the progress of the werewolf-legend. Especially when they claimed that horrifying indescribable animals chased them down but no one during that period in time had ever seen those types of animals’ delirium was in all probability the cause for the most part, what they saw. What's more, ‘tingling and loss of sensation in the extremities’ could possibly have been interpreted as shape shifting (“Ergot” 2005, para 3). Cold and wet weather does often favor the growth of the toxic fungus known as ergot, with the worst outbreaks following a severe winter succeeded by a rainy spring (Bennett, & Bentley, 1999, p. 333). In extreme cases of ergot poisoning some people that survived were then left paralyzed, epileptic, blind, stuporous, mute, demented, or psychotic (Packer, Huss, & Witztum, 1998, pg. 227). There are two main clinical forms of toxicity, gangrenous and convulsive, where coma and death often supervene: the death rate for ergotism was reported to be between 10 and 20 per cent in major outbreaks. Historical accounts note that ergot could accelerate labor, stop postpartum hemorrhage, and inhibit lactation (Lee, 2009, pg.179). The scientist Dr. Hofmann accidently stumbled across the drug LSD while working with a medicinal fungus called ergot. When he was on his first LSD "trip" which occurred in 1943, he had a disturbing experience, which led him to write in his journal, "A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind, and soul". If the drug LSD was that strong watered down with the other chemicals that he put into it just imagine how strong it was in its basic form without being deluded with anything else when the Salem children ate it in tainted bread (Bernstein, 2008, para 3). Ergot of 1692 and the drug LSD of the 1960’s were not on the same dosage because ergot is the drug in its basic form, without anything added or taken away from it The Salem town people murdered nineteen innocent people on gallows hill, then they crushed another man to death; they may have called it justice at the time, but it was murder. The victims in the Salem witch trials only died because they would not commit a sin against God and confess to crimes that they never committed. Today people would gladly lie cheat or steal to get their own neck out of the noose but people in the 1600’s had more honor than people do today. They would rather die knowing that they were innocent than to live with a lie on their lips. The real reason that the trials happened was because some little girls ate tainted bread and then those same little girls kept it going because they were afraid to admit they were wrong and made a mistake. As shown below in the map and on the chart most of the afflicted lived in Salem village and ate food from the same bakery. Most of the people that did not live in Salem village were not afflicted with ergotism symptoms. A map of people accused in Salem in 1692 during the ergotism outbreak and a chart of in which, the afflicted people lived during the Salem witch trials. |Afflicted neighborhoods | |Location |number | |Andover |5 | |Boston |6 | |Boxford |1 | |charlestown |1 | |Gloucester |1 | |Groton |1 | |marblehead |1 | |Reading |3 | | salem town |2 | | salem village |16* | |Topsfield |2 | | Wenham |2 | |Unknown |2 | [pic] Despite the fact that the witch trials stopped with Salem but witch hunts and persecution still exists today even in these modern times, it seems like people have learned nothing from what Salem has taught us. People have not learned anything from the history books because that is why people keep making the same mistakes as the people in the past did. The hysteria that occurred in Salem in 1692 was drug induced by ergotism but the people kept it going. Despite the fact that ergotism used to be much more common, in the past and it is almost nonexistent in civilization, today but people do still use it only in small doses for migraines. The drug is actually FDA approved and on the market as an alkaloids migraines medicine. In wrapping up, the hysteria that over took Salem, did; in fact happen a few times before but the question remains will anything like the Salem trials ever happen again. Will people ever mislead others again by fear and hysteria, and a drug, which people do not even use today' References Caporael, L (1976, July 12). Ergotism: The satan loosed in salem. Retrieved from: http://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/drugged-salem-witchtrial.htm/printable Coventry, W (2010, April 3). Demonic possession on trial: (igoogle). Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books'id=53mUWKwACMcC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=alice+samuel+1590+cromwell&source=bl&ots=KnLrIVP2Pv&sig=TA0ihfpYuOMJX8GT8nGUE-449tE&hl=en&ei=jCSjS8zlK4iKNJCrgYEJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CCAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=alice%20samuel%201590%20cromwell&f=false Ergot poisoning. (1998, July 15). Monstrous.com. Retrieved (2010, April 24) from http://werewolves.monstrous.com/ergot_poisoning.htm Stefko, J. (2010, March 3). Ergot caused some witch-hunts. Suite101. Retrieved (2010, May 1) from http://paganismwicca.suite101.com/article.cfm/ergot_caused_some_witch_hunts_theory Tollund man. (1989, January 18). nationmaster.com. Retrieved (2010, May 1) from http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Tollund-Man Bernstein, A. (2008, April 30). Albert hofmann, 102; chemist discovered lsd. The washington post, Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/29/AR2008042902738.html Ergot. (2005, January 18). Werewolves: the myths & the truths. Retrieved (2010, May 2) from http://alam25.tripod.com/inf.htm Bennett , J , & Bentley, R. (Spring 1999). Pride and prejudice: the story of ergot. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 333. Retrieved from http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/gps/retrieve.do'contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28KE%2CNone%2C27%29ergotism+salem+witch+trials%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28AC%2CNone%2C8%29fulltext%24&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=BasicSearchForm&tabID=T002&prodId=IPS&searchId=R1¤tPosition=1&userGroupName=uphoenix&docId=A54910522&docType=IAC&contentSet=IAC-Documents Packer, S, Huss, B, & Witztum, E, (1998). Pride and prejudice: the story of ergot. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 35(3), Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/pqdweb'index=1&did=36178096&SrchMode=1&sid=4&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1272865802&clientId=13118 Lee, M. (2009, June 3). The History of ergot of rye (claviceps purpurea) i: from antiquity to 1900.. Historical Article; Journal Article, 39(2), Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/ehost/detail'vid=3&hid=109&sid=f3d9fae4-e932-4df8-82e3-9c97b90bae72%40sessionmgr113&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=mnh&AN=19847980