Why not ergot and the Salem witch trials?
A Q&A with Margo Burns, associate editor and project manager of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt and expert featured on the Who Do You Think You Are? TV series.
WitchesMassBay: What is the premise behind the idea that ergot caused the Salem witch hunts?
Margo Burns: The initial proposition of this idea came from an observation that the symptoms of the accusing girls in Salem Village appeared to resemble the physical and hallucinogenic symptoms of convulsive ergotism. Ergot is a toxic fungus that can grow on rye grain used to make bread in the 17th century, and it has a chemical similarity to LSD, a known hallucinogen. The connection does not explain why the adults in the community—parents, clergy, judges—interpreted such reported symptoms as being caused by bewitchment.
WitchesMassBay: Some notable people, including accused witch John Proctor, believed the core group of afflicted accusers were lying and pretending their illnesses. In 1692, would people have had an understanding that ergot (or contaminated food) caused hallucinations and physical reactions?
Margo Burns: Doctors and “chirurgeons” were often called for help when someone fell ill mysteriously, and ministers were often asked to come pray for the patients to recover with the help of God. A popular witch-finding guide of the period by Richard Bernard gives a list of examples of how doctors were able to diagnose what may have appeared to be bewitchment instead of known physical ailments, including one case that was as simple as the patient having worms, and who got better after “voiding” them. Blood-letting, laxatives, emetics, and diuretics were common treatments as a result of their understanding of how the four “humours” worked in the body. Some of their cures were actually right on the money. They knew about the dangers of spoiled food and many other things, which, frankly, were more common then than now.
WitchesMassBay: Today, the debate on ergot continues, with scientists and witch-hunt historians on both sides. Why is this such a popular theory?
Margo Burns: It is not technically a theory, but a hypothesis, a guess. It would be a theory if there were solid evidence to support it, but it is circumstantial at best. Both historians and medical professionals have found that the evidence offered contains cherry-picked data and ignores known exculpatory evidence. There doesn’t seem to be a debate about that, even though it is often portrayed as such in the popular media, because who doesn’t like experts disagreeing? Except that they don’t. If there’s debate, it is more like debating whether the moon landing was real or not: There will always be someone who believes it was faked, no matter what is presented to them as evidence. Also, many people who hold this explanation as valid often do so because it positions the people of the 17th century as ignorant and superstitious while we in the 21st century are superior in our scientific understanding. Single-bullet solutions for complicated events are also reassuring, especially if it feels like a secret has been revealed, and we’re in on it.
Ergot as the toxic culprit behind the accusers’ symptoms was not necessarily what engaged people about this idea in the mid-1970s when first posited: It was that ergot was chemically and symptomatically similar to LSD.
WitchesMassBay: Any other theories you would like to debunk?
Margo Burns: It is not really about debunking as it is understanding that every critical approach to historical material is actually a filter through which the facts are perceived—some coming into focus and others blurring into the background, depending on the person’s interests and world-view, often with some creative embellishment to complete a popular trope of the time period.
Charles Wentworth Upham, an antiquarian from Salem writing during the mid-18th century, portrayed Tituba, known to be a slave from Barbados, as a Civil War-era stereotype of a voodoo-practicing Black African Mammy from the South, even though Tituba was consistently described in the primary sources as being an Indian. From this, he fabricated the story that the accusing girls had been learning magic from her and went dancing in the woods—none of which is in any of the primary sources—to explain the girls’ behavior. Because this story is vivid and shocking, it comes across as plausible and is generally accepted as true, even now and even though it is not supported by any primary sources.
Arthur Miller repeated the story about the girls dancing in the woods in his play, The Crucible, in the 1950s. Miller was swept up personally in Senator McCarthy’s anti-Communist activities, and the story of public trials based on false accusations condemning innocent people in Salem resonated for him. The Crucible is an extremely popular play, and his craftsmanship so superb that audiences start believing that the story and characters are based more closely on the real events and people than they are. His use of names of real people for his characters further blurs the line. The play is so compelling, in fact, that over the years in discussing the origins of his play, Miller himself began to believe that some of the fictive things he wrote were in the primary sources he had read, even though he hadn’t.
Margo Burns was project manager for Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, the most complete compendium of the trial documents.
Margo recorded two lectures on ergot—and both of them are different:
Ergot – What a long strange trip it has been -The Moldy Bread Myth by Margo Burns (Witch House, 2018)
The Salem Witchcraft Trials and Ergot, the “Moldy Bread” Hypothesis by Margo Burns (History Camp 2018)
