this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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And there was a chance your bread was moldy. But, hey, get the right kind of mold, and you get to start accusing people of witchcraft.
And the wine would be safe, but possibly heavily watered down to keep a barrel for longer.
It's highly unlikely the witchcraft accusations were caused by ergotism.
It's kinda crazy how easily the ergot theory took over. For 200 years, it was widely accepted that it was a case of mass hysteria, moral panic, and religious extremism. Then someone hypothesized it could be ergotism because the reported symptoms are similar.
And people immediately took it as a fact, because a clear, single cause is much easier to explain.
Y'know, like how they blamed the "witches" for anything bad?
Why didn't anyone else develop ergotism? If their source of rye was contaminated, more people would have fallen ill.
Why did it only affect a handful of adolescent girls, who happened to be friends?
Why did another town 20 miles away have more accusations of witchcraft around the same time?
Why didn't they recognize the symptoms at the time? St Anthony's Fire was well-documented and treatable since the Middle Ages.
The wine would be served in a lead cup to make it taste sweeter.
delicious heavy metal salts
The wine may have been spiced with mercury to make it healthier