Witchcraft or mycotoxin? The Salem witch trials.

Salem Witch Trials: The Fungus Theory Witch or Psychedelic Trip?

During the winter of 1692 eight girls came down with a mysterious and terrifying illness in the colonial town of Salem, Massachusetts. They vomited, screamed incomprehensibly, claimed to see things that weren’t there, felt the crawling and pricking of invisible needles against their skin, and convulsed and contorted into impossible positions. Physicians were called to examine the girls, but the...

Witchcraft, Weather and Economic Growth in Renaissance Europe

B etween the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries, as many as one million individuals in Europe were executed for the crime of witchcraft. The majority of the trials and executions took place during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this period, the speed and volume of executions were astonishing: in one German town, as many as 400 people were killed in a single day (Midelfort, 197...

Mycotoxins in Fruit and Fruit Products

The term “mycotoxin” is generally associated with secondary metabolic toxic products of filamentous fungi to which humans and animals can be exposed, most often through ingestion. This exposure can result in a range of toxicities (acute to chronic), and a spectrum of effects (mild to severe) including carcinogenicity and death. The history of mycotoxicoses has been long and dramatic, including ...

Monstrous Women: Exploring Historical Witchcraft and Its Presence in The Witch

I the 1600s, the Puritans were still sailing to the United States— to them, the “New World”—in search of religious freedom and new beginnings; however, in their attempt to leave behind England and its influence, the Puritans brought with them Europe’s archaic views of witchcraft and women as monsters. The Puritans projected these fears of witchcraft onto women in a variety of ways: accusations ...

Ergotism and the Salem Village witch trials.