Here is my full paper! Tell me what you think! I will appreciate it! Thank so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Salem was a small town, in the west corner of Massachusetts. The village was a Puritan community. The inhabitants were all very social, and close-knit. Gossip was common, and word spread quickly. When strange things started happening in their peaceful town, everyone knew about it. The first occurrence was that several children took sick. Many infants died, and cattle perished as a result of an unknown substance. The community, being Puritan and believing strongly in devilish lore, blamed this on witchcraft. To be a witch in a town such as Salem was a heinous crime. All were strongly against anything to do with Satan. Anyone who did consort with him was a traitor to their fellow people .Those convicted would be examined for “witch marks” then punished. Few were killed by any other means than hanging, but many died while serving prison terms. What many interested in the field don’t know is that when an accused person walked into the courthouse, they were immediately presumed guilty. Evidence was always thrown against them. There was little or no time for them to defend themselves. Almost everyone accused of witchcraft wasn’t charged guilty. The people would generally complain of afflictions, missing property, deaths in the family due to unknown reasons, et cetera. Then they would pick a person and blame him/her for it under the title “witch”. The evidence was slight. In some cases there was no evidence except the testimonials of the accusers. Even these remained inconsistent, but as they were supposed victims, their word was higher than the defendants’. Many suggestions of possible sources of the afflictions have been presented over time, including encephalitis lethargica. Yet that occurrence remains highly improbable. The more prevalent explanation is ergotism. Ergotism comes from eating rye, barley, or wheat contaminated with ergot. Ergot is a mold that grows on several different types of grain; it contains lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). LSD is best known of the hallucinogenic class of drugs. In Salem people who ingested this drug experienced all sorts of bizarre inexplicable behavior. Ergotism, and not witchcraft, or disease was the source of the pains, visions, and spasms of the villagers. Proof of this is that symptoms of LSD and afflictions of “victims of witchcraft” are the same. The inhabitants of Salem Village grew rye, and other grains as a main food source. There was an outbreak of ergot in the late 1990s. The accused were innocent of inflicting or stealing anything from victims. The symptoms of the victims in the trials perfectly match those of symptoms of LSD users. In several instances girls experienced the sensations of being pricked and pinched. One of the effects of LSD is to experience unusual body sensations. Betty and Abigail Parris, experienced these exact ambiances. “Both girls were bitten and pinched by invisible agents. Their arms, necks, and backs turned this way and that…” (Story pg.1) The second most noticeable symptom was hallucinations. John Hughes himself saw a dreary haze every time he ate. Common hallucinations were birds uncharacteristic to the lands of Massachusetts. These were seen by Tituba, Johanna Childen. Ann Putnam Sr., and Sarah Nurse. Animals seemed to generally appear to a person. In addition birds, dogs and discolored rats emerged in their imaginations. John Hughes had seen a dog at the foot of his bed repeatedly. Lights were another common hallucination; Eliaser Keysar saw them in his chimney. One of the lesser known indications of LSD poisoning (ergotism) is the onset of flashbacks. Johanna Childen saw her dead child playing in the yard as it used to on several days. The Shattucks saw the “reincarnation” of their dead grandmother in fits on the floor, the way she had been right before she died. Most physical afflictions were these fits. When LSD was consumed multiple times a day, the results were nausea, sour stomach, paranoia, and even muscle spasms. Consequently younger children and middle aged women were recorded to have fits more and more often. “Between 1689 and 1700 the citizens complained of symptoms that included fits, spectral visions, mental distraction, pinching, pin pricking and bites on their skin, lethargy, and even death. They ‘barked liked dogs’, were unable to walk, and had their arms and legs ‘nearly twisted out of joint’” (Fever pg.8) The citizens had no idea what was happening to them. Cattle were dropping dead periodically. The parries family lost seventeen head of cattle in one year preceding the trials. It was recorded in Reverend Parris’s journal that the cattle ate the grain that grew in their fields. When LSD is consumed by cows or horses, tests prove, that large amounts can kill the animal by means of disrupting the digestive tracts. This explains why when they cut open their livestock to investigate, there was no sign of infliction. The results would have been purged from the body before the animal died, as it was in tested animals. Their children were sickening. Worst of all strange things kept materializing without a known cause. It was perfectly logical for them to blame the afflictions on witchcraft. They did not surmise that their troubles came form what they were eating. There was an outbreak of ergot in the rye the year of the trials. One proof is that the weather conditions that year were perfect for growing the mold. Ergot grows in semi-hot, humid, rainy springs and summers. When Ms. Linnda Caporael searched through the records of the Salem residents, she found that the same conditions were present in 1691. Mostly all of the accusers lived in the western section of Salem village, an area of swamps and wet plains that would have been perfect breeding ground for the fungus. “The rye crop consumed in the winter of 1691-1692 -- when the first usual symptoms began to be reported -- could easily have been contaminated by large quantities of ergot. The summer of 1692, however, was dry, which could explain the abrupt end of the 'bewitchments.' These and other clues built up into a circumstantial case against ergot that Caporael found impossible to ignore.” (Secrets pg.2) A few of the populace in the towns wrote in their journals of rainy days. A few of the more aged persons who had seen other years noted that it was unusually damp, bad for the arthritis. The people of the area noticed that there was something wrong with their crops. Rye had an unusually high price that year because of the infection. Certain prodigious members of the community were selling off their land or giving it away. Then there was the fact that The Sheldons saw a slimy yellow pus on their barley plants. Claviceps purpurea, one species of ergot which is said to grow on barley, gives of a orange-ish mucus shortly after infecting is host. The farmers living in the surrounding suburbs, and rural areas once petitioned not to be sent to the coast guard, for the Native Americans of the area were raiding. They stole mostly food. This indicates that the Native Americans, with out the technology of the day, were suffering the contamination of their main food source worse than the Puritan population. Why else would they have raided farmers shacks for their bread? The other foods that were largely consumed by those involved in the trials were dairy, and fish. The dairy and fish prices dropped that year because more of these food groups were being consumed. The townspeople had to eat more of other substances because their bread was bad. It was a shame though that they didn’t connect bad food with the convulsions of their neighbors. The bad crop in addition to affecting the inflicted, also played a role in the lives of the accused. Sarah Good, at her testimony, after claiming that she was innocent because she was ill, then requested leave of a court trial “so that I [she] could tend to my [her] bad field, as the workers have quit saying it was hopeless” (Story pg.22) There had to have been an outbreak of the mold in the 1691-1692 farming year, or else Ms. Good’s fields would have been in better shape than they were when she left the magistrate’s office. The final proof of ergotism causing the afflictions that led to the Salem Witch Trials is that. The accused were innocent of the crimes that they were convicted for. In almost all books and documents about the trials, this appears beside some other explanation for the illnesses. On one side of convicting witches was the Devil. The inability to pray was supposed to be a trait of an evil person. Almost all who were convicted (with the exception of Sarah Osborne, who died in prison) the accused would say the Lord’s Prayer, often on the day of their hanging. That totally negates the idea of real witches by the fact that it goes against the Puritan’s ideal witch. Some of the charges presented against loyal citizens were in no sense related to witchcraft. For instance, Rebecca Nurse was charged with stabbing a young man in the chest with a knife. First of all, stabbing someone is a charge of assault that should have been brought up in an entirely separate case. Second, if Rebecca had stabbed the man there was no evidence of it, there was no knife wound, no knife for that matter. The apparitions of witches supposedly seen by the afflicted were in no way proved, but as stated above the accused were presumed guilty from the start of the trial; so a person claiming to be hurt by their next door neighbor, as a victim was automatically alleged to be telling the truth. Another part of the Puritan witch myth was “witch marks”. A witch would have had some kind of mark, extra nipple or scar from which a familiar would feed. In the physical examinations of the seventy-some suspects, very few marks were found. They could have been attributed to moles, birth-marks, or even as a result of LSD poisoning. One of its affects is, in test subjects, to have strange rash-like marks to appear on the body. In another case, George Burroughs, a Eucharistic minister in the community, was accused of witchcraft on the grounds of having supernatural strength. He could supposedly lift and carry a filled barrel of molasses with two fingers. How is this the evil so hated in that community? He had admitted to his clergy that his strength was odd, but his family had possessed such abilities for generations. This base of his “supernatural powers” was truly just part of genetics. The evidence of some of the trials is sketchy. As noted in certain books, such as A Fever in Salem by Laurie Winn Carlson, the testimonials of victims were often changed so as to suit the purpose of seeming more incriminating. There is no proof of witchcraft, but testimonies that were inconsistent, changed, rebuted or dismissed in the later recounts of the trials. Fraud was not an option for this particular chain of events. Linnda Caporeal had the same sentiments and proved her theory by writing multiple essays on the topic. Several websites that have been found greatly dispute the idea of ergotism; though it is vast becoming popular. Sometimes it is found in some examinations that confessions of witchcraft were made. These were in the lesser trials where testimonies are changed from source to source. The inconsistence of actual confession by accused persons presents a lack of defined evidence for those accused persons. If a person exposed themselves of practicing witchcraft the trial would not be furthered. Instead a sentence would immediately be delivered. In other cases, victims present at the trials would fall in to fits at the mention of their name by their torturers. Some say that this points indefinitely to fraud. Instead, does this evidence point even more to ergotism? If victims are falling into fits in public places it is because of forces beyond their control. Furthermore, why do accounts of these “courthouse fits” vary from source to source? No, the theory of fraud does not have enough proof to back it. Ergotism is the most logical, and most proved explanation for these horrible happenings. The symptoms of victims and tested subjects of LSD are the same. Rye was grown there, as well as other important grains susceptible to ergot. The accused were innocent of witchcraft, therefore something else had to have been the source of pains, ergotism was that source. Works Cited · Rosenthal, Bernard The Salem Story Press Syndicate, New York, 1993 · Carlson, Laurie A Fever in Salem Dee, Chicago, 1999 · Boyer, Paul, Stephen Salem-Village Witchcraft Northeastern University Press, Massachusetts 1993 · Robinson, Enders The Devil Discovered Hippocrene Inc., New York,1991 · Hill, Frances The Salem Witch Trials Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, 2000 · Littell, Mary Ann LSD Enslaw Publishers, New Jersey, 1996 · http:// www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets2/case1_clues.htmlIn · Http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1037.html · Saari, Peggy Witchcraft In America Wood Bridge, Connecticut, 2001 · www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd.shtml _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com