Claviceps Purpurea - Speculations

Speculations

Human poisoning due to the consumption of rye bread made from ergot-infected grain was common in Europe in the Middle Ages. The epidemic was known as Saint Anthony's fire, or ignis sacer.

Linnda R. Caporael posited in 1976 that the hysterical symptoms of young women that had spurred the Salem witch trials had been the result of consuming ergot-tainted rye. However, her conclusions were later disputed by Nicholas P. Spanos and Jack Gottlieb, after a review of the historical and medical evidence. Other authors have likewise cast doubt on ergotism having been the cause of the Salem witch trials.

The Great Fear in France during the Revolution has also been linked by some historians to the influence of ergot.

British author John Grigsby claims that the presence of ergot in the stomachs of some of the so called 'bog-bodies' (Iron Age human remains from peat bogs N E Europe such as Tollund Man), reveals that ergot was once a ritual drink in a prehistoric fertility cult akin to the Eleusinian Mysteries cult of ancient Greece. In his book Beowulf and Grendel he argues that the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is based on a memory of the quelling of this fertility cult by followers of Odin. He states that Beowulf, which he translates as barley-wolf, suggests a connection to ergot which in German was known as the 'tooth of the wolf'.

In 1951 at Pont St. Esprit in France there was an outbreak of violent hallucinations among hundreds of residents. At the time, this was alleged by scientists working for the LSD-producing Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz to be mass ergot poisoning, but there is now some disputed evidence that this episode was due to LSD administered covertly to the population by the CIA.