A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials, by Laurie Winn Carlson . Ivan R. Dee, Chicago. 1999. Here's a new title on my bookshelf -- actually, it hasn't even hit my bookshelf yet, because as soon as the lettercarrier delivered it to my hands, it hit the top of the "must read" pile and I finished it off in record time this morning. :D It's scheduled to be released in October, but I placed an advanced order with Amazon.com on 7/28, expecting to wait, but it arrived yesterday, 8/2... :D This is essentially an historical epidemiological study of encephalitis lethargica, placed in a sociological context, i.e., how the people explained the phenomenon of the disease in their social context, specifically in Salem in 1692 when they called it witchcraft and possession. Oddly enough, Carlson says it is practically the same illness which afflicted the patients who didn't die (or recover, for that matter) from a strange global epidemic in the 1920s -- which you may know a little about already: Oliver Sacks wrote about treating those patients in the 1960s with L-dopa in his well-known book (and subsequent movie) "Awakenings." Carlson looks not only at Salem, but at other witchcraft accusations in New England (primarily in Connecticut) in the 17th century, the witchcraze in Europe, as well as migratory bird patterns (why some places but not others?), weather (wet or dry conditions for mosquitos?), concurrence with influenza epidemics, and documentation of strange deaths of livestock -- finally putting the onus on mosquitos and ticks carrying the virus from the birds to horses, cattle -- and humans. I think she makes a pretty good case for explaining the symptoms of many (I won't go so far as to say all...) of the afflicted. Here's an interesting comparative list of the symptoms from the book (p. 124): SALEM, 1692 <---> ENCEPHALITIS EPIDEMIC, 1916-1930 fits <---> convulsions spectral visions <---> hallucinations mental "distraction" <---> psychoses pinching, pricking <---> myoclunus of small muscle bundles on skin surface "bites" <---> erythmata on skin surface, capillary hemorrhaging eyes twisted <---> oculogyric crises: gaz fixed upward, downward, or to the side inability to walk <---> paresis: partial paralysis neck twisted <---> torticollis: spasm of neck muscles forces head to once side, spasms affect trunk & neck repeating nonsense words <---> palilalia: repetition of one's own words Elsewhere in the text, she does mention suggestibility as a symptom of the people with encephalitis -- which might help explain both the way they accepted suggestions for the names of witches, and the group behaviors which swept through the afflicted so dramatically. I found the book compelling and convincing, but I encourage anyone else out there with a medical background to take a look and let me know whether you think it's bunk or not. 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