On 4/22/99, Claude Hunter <[email protected]> wrote: >Has anyone seen, or did the recent PBS video mention the likelyhood that >some of the girls that reportedly had "fits" may have been under the >influence of halucigins?. My understanding is that a mold that can grow >on rye has haluciginic effects. I also understand that the hauciginic >mold can form on bread baked with rye flour. This is the infamous "ergotism" theory, put forth in Linda Caporael's "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?" [Science, Vol. 192, No. 4234 (April 2, 1976)]. It was refuted almost immediately by Nicholas P. Spanos & Jock Gottlieb in a subsequent issue of Science, but it is certainly pernicious because it keeps popping up. The basic problems with the theory which Spanos and Gottlieb point out include: 1) specific digestive-tract symptoms of ergot poisoning are not reported in the afflicted; 2) the symptoms would come and go in a group in unison, which is more indicative of a psychological basis for the fits than a biological one; and 3) whole households would be more likely to be affected by a poison in a dietary staple, but only one or two members of any given household were affected. The theory has a firm place in the current folk theory of the events in Salem, and was used by Robin Cook in his novel "Acceptable Risk." Both articles from Science are available in Marc Mappen's excellent anthology about how historians have viewed the events in Salem: "Witches & Historians: Interpretations of Salem" [Keiger: Malabar, Florida. 1996]. This is unfortunately now out of print (according to Amazon.com), but I did a quick search for "Marc Mappen" and found that a couple of used book dealers at http://www/bibliofind.com and at http://www.abebooks.com have copies for sale for $10-12 plus shipping. Cheers, Margo Margo Burns, Webweaver [email protected] http://www.ogram.org Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." -- Chomsky