WEBVTT - The Psychedelic Nightmare of Ergotism 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.560 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:18.480 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe listeners. 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:23.079 Imagine yourself a time traveling wonderer in the sixteenth Citree. 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:27.120 It's a time of horror and wonder, of budding possibilities 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:30.280 for a more informed age, as well uh as pools 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:34.520 of lingering shadow and superstition. You come to the Monastery 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:38.280 of Saint Anthony in Eisenheim, near Colmar and what is 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.320 now modern day France. Now what do you expect to find? 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:45.200 It's such a monastery. How is your education and entertainment 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:48.560 prepared you for such a place? Pious robed brothers praying 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.800 before elaborate altars, studious monks secluded in their libraries and 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:57.200 scriptoriums ah. But here you encounter the stinch of illness 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.160 and corruption. You hear the cries of the pain than 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.720 the mad. You find the hospital brothers of Saint Anthony 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.920 as they tirelessly treat victims of plague, skin disease, and 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:12.320 especially that condition known as Saint Anthony's fire or urgic poisoning. 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:14.920 As you make your way through the monastery, you glimpse 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:19.720 of blackened limbs, you hear psychotic cries, voices describing hallucination 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:23.760 straight from some surrealistic vision of hell, and as you 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.680 enter the sanctuary yourself, you glimpse and altar unlike anything 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:33.760 you've imagined before. Behold the Eisenheim altarpiece of Matthias Grunwald 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:37.040 in its current configuration. The great folding work of art 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:42.120 presents a familiar motif, Jesus Christ crucified at Golgotha, but 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:45.840 it's easily the most grotesque image of Christ you've ever seen. 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:49.960 You'd be tempted to think it blasphemous, even for Christ's 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:54.000 skin is dark at times, greenish, gangrenous, covered in sores 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:58.240 in addition to the familiar wounds of execution. Because this 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:02.080 work of art, this interpretation of absolute human death and suffering, 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:08.720 emerges from the ravages of ergotism. Ergotism, so that's going 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:11.360 to be the subject today. But I've seen this work 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:14.160 of art you're talking about, You've called attention to it 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:20.320 before Gruenwald's Diseased Christ, and it looks like something that is, 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.720 as you pointed out, intended to be blasphemous. It looks 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:27.440 like something from a metal album insert. Like, you know, 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:30.480 you're flipping through the pages of the CD insert and 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:33.840 it's got a pentagram, and it's got like a you know, 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:37.160 crucified goat with blood everywhere, and then it's got this 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:42.839 diseased Jesus with with you know, sores and this greenish body. 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:46.120 It doesn't look like your traditional image of the of 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:49.240 pious Christ, right, Yeah, it's and it's it's fascinating and 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:51.320 it it is. When we get into it, you'll see 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:54.800 that it is a very pious image. It was not 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.560 created out of any sense of you know, blasphemous outrage, 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:03.359 but it does look like zombie Jesus. Yeah, So what 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.920 is Ergot And what in the world would something called 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.240 Ergot have to do with a diseased Christ from a 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:14.120 metal album insert? So imagine you're walking through a grain 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:18.639 field with tall stalks of rye all around you, and 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:21.840 so we're not all that close to the agriculture that 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:25.880 sustains our lives anymore. Rye might actually need some explanation. 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:28.919 It is a cultivated grass crops, so it's like wheat 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:33.839 or barley, and we can use rye to make bread's beer, whiskey. 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.360 The scientific name of this plant is secale cereal l A. 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:40.120 I think secale and then like cereal with any at 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:44.080 the end. So you're a body meeting a body coming 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:47.200 through the rye, and you notice that on some of 0:03:47.240 --> 0:03:50.000 the stalks of the grass of the rye, where the 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:53.560 little rye grains would normally be poking out of the stalk, 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:59.640 there are instead these long, dark, purple to black fingers 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:05.440 reaching into the air like twisted, deformed little uh mockery's 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:09.480 of the seeds that should be in this plant. One 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.360 are these things? Well, each of these little fingers is 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:15.600 an ergot, or another name for them in science would 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:20.279 be the sclerotium. It's a piece of fungal tissue, so 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:24.440 it's mushroom in nature fungus, and it grows when the 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:29.080 grain is infected with the fungus Claviceps perpurea, and that's 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:33.560 a parasite that infects the ovaries, the female sex organs 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:37.240 of the plant. In grasses and the host is most 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.479 soften rye, but other grasses and grains can fall victim 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:45.080 to ergot. This is so common in rye that people 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:47.640 actually thought it was a part of the grain up 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:50.560 until the eighteen fifties when we really began to understand 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:54.120 the true fungal nature of the ergot, which is something 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:57.000 to keep in mind as we discussed the problems that 0:04:57.000 --> 0:04:59.640 are mgered from human consumption of ergan. Exactly right. And 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:01.840 so we're gonna get to the human consumption in a minute, 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:04.160 because that's central to the podcast. But first we should 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:06.800 actually talk about what this thing is, what does it 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.960 due to the plants because nobody, nobody cares about the plants. 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:14.000 They're the ones that really suffer. So the urga itself, 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:17.760 what is this thing's little black, purple black finger poking 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:20.920 up out of the rye stalk. The urg it itself 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:24.039 is what's known as an overwintering structure. It so it's 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:28.560 this protective architecture that allows the fungus to survive through 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:31.599 the freezing season and make it to the next stage 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:35.800 in its reproductive cycle. Uh and clavisups produces both sexual 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:40.800 and asexual spores to spread and infect new hosts. When 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.520 the fungal infection cycle begins, you'll often see do forming 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:46.960 on the ovaries of the host plants. You know where 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:50.600 where the seed and grain structure is, and this sticky 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:53.320 residue is a mixture of the plant's own sap and 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:58.360 then a sexually produced fungal spores called canidia. And these 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:01.400 a sexual spores can in effect other hosts when they're 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:05.240 spread by physical contact, so on the bodies of insects, 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:08.200 or even by the splashes of rain drops. I don't 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:11.160 know if you've seen anything about how some parasites spread 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:13.360 from plant to plant by the rain. And the rain 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:16.800 hits the plant, it splashes the parasite everywhere onto the 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.960 plants next to it, So that's one method of transmission. 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:23.800 But then as the seed head matures, some of it's 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:28.920 normally healthy grains are replaced by these ergo it's or sclerotia, 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:32.520 which are designed to keep the fungal parasite alive through 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:36.880 the cold months. When the spring arrives, the surviving ergot 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:41.279 sprout multiple stromata, which are these stalks with little knobs 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:43.520 at the end, and they look more like what you 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:45.560 think of when you hear the word mushroom. There the 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:50.039 stromata singular stroma produced sexual spores as opposed to the 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:53.839 a sexual spores produced at the earlier stage called asco spores, 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:56.680 and once the spores are developed, they get spit out 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.599 into the air to carry on the circle of life 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:04.039 of fungus, and so, like wind driven pollen, they get 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:06.919 caught in the stigma of other host plants and go 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:11.400 on to infect new grass ovaries. So that's the story 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:14.840 of Claviceps purpurea. It's not trying to get into you. 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:17.400 It's trying to get into the rye. It wants to 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:19.840 spread from plant to plant like a plague upon the 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:24.520 earth and become the zombie virus that that is the 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:28.080 rye apocalypse. But that is not actually the end of 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.000 the story. Because let's say we're back walking through this 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:34.040 field of infected rye, and instead of just walking through 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:36.560 the field, you're walking through the field with a scythe 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:41.320 and you're harvesting these ergan infested stalks, fungus fingers and all, 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:44.600 and you take it home and you turn it into 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:47.640 some delicious rye bread for you and your family to eat, 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:52.400 pastrami sandwiches. On what's going to happen to you? Well, 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.560 some bad stuff can happen um And in this we 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:00.880 get into sort of the complexities of of ergotism and 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:05.360 ergot poisoning, because we have essentially two different forms of 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:09.960 ergotism that can occur. Yeah, so in these overwintering structures. Uh, 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:14.640 these little black fingers, they're toxic alkaloids and they can 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:18.760 have various types of effects. Right, Yeah, there are essentially 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:22.000 there are different strains of the of the organism that 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:26.360 have different effects when consumed. So on one hand you 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:31.160 have gangrenous ergotism, which is as horrible as it sounds. 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:33.040 So the idea here is that ergotism is essentially a 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:35.880 vase of constrictor, so it constricts the blood vessels, so 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:39.120 it can severely limit the blood flow to the extremities, 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:43.000 which can result in a range of symptoms. Um, you 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.880 can get nausea, limb pain and this, Uh, this particular 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:49.240 pain in the limbs is often described as having a 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:55.160 burning sensation, which earned it the nickname ignis say holy 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:57.800 fire and this and it can also cause the skin 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.880 to appeal. Blisters to you occur all over and then 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:04.920 this can essentially even lead to to to gang green 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.040 occurring because again the blood vessels are constricted, it's less 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.240 blood reaching the extremities, and these extremities can then turn 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:15.920 black and mummified, causing the infected limbs to spontaneously break 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.600 off at the joints. But there's no pain involved in 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:23.240 this because it's just been cut off, so it's already dead. Yeah, 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:27.240 it's just dead tissue at this point, but it's still rotting. 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:31.320 It's still that the stinch can still be just completely unbearable. Yeah, 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:36.280 so just imagine that, because you ate the regular food 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:39.080 from your regular food supply coming in maybe through your 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:42.360 town bakery or something like that, you end up with 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:46.480 mummified feet or mummified hands and you're still alive, but 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:49.520 you've got blackened limbs that burn it first, then turn 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.920 black like a mummy and fall off. Yeah. It's what 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:58.120 kind of surreal life is this? It's terrifying, especially when 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:00.240 you think about it coming from consuming because we so 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:02.800 often don't think of bread as being this dangerous thing 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:06.040 because it's such an artificial food substance, right, right, it's 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:08.679 not like maynnai is left out in the sun that 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:10.760 you can just you know, we quickly think of as 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:12.679 like that's going to be a problem in your body, Right, 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:16.280 it's bread, what could go wrong? Okay, So that's gangernous sarchetism. 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:19.120 But then there's also convulsive evergotism, and this is the 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:23.200 nervous dysfunction variant UH, and this can also result in 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:27.400 a host of horrible things such as vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.000 the sensation of ants and spiders crawling all over your body, 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:38.920 what painful seizures, twitching, spasms, convulsions, blindness, deafness, um and 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:43.200 generally that the gastro intestinal symptoms that I mentioned. Those 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:47.920 proceed a full blown central nervous system condition, and in 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:53.479 its in extremes, you're also encountering hallucinations, mania and psychosis. 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:57.160 Can you get both strains at the same time? Oh? Yes, 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.079 that's where it gets even because I'm one, hay. Do 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.240 you have the mummified stinking flesh rotting variant, then you 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:05.680 have the madness, spiders all over me, and I'm in 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:10.160 just a psychotic collusiontory state. And indeed, um they can 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.440 occur concurrently, so you can get a mixed form. Though 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:17.040 historically we tend to see geographic areas in Europe with 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:20.200 greater tendency towards one form of the these versus the other, 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:23.640 because again we're looking at slightly different strains of the 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:28.440 fungus causing either a convulsive organginous organism. And then there's 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:32.080 Also this the ergic stage of the fungus contains a 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.960 storehouse of various compounds, ranging from the benign to even 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.560 as well discussed beneficial uh. And since the proportions of 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:42.960 the compound vary even within the species, the same person 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.800 might experience different symptoms on a subsequent consumption of the 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:50.360 same ergic strain. So you're just kind of rolling the 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:55.600 like awful dungeon master dice every time you come across 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.480 some erg it in your bread. That's so scary. And 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:01.880 also just combine this with the fact that it was 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:05.200 so common in the medieval period, and you can just 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:09.800 imagine the confusion and the terror that went along with 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:14.400 all of this suffering. Yeah, because you have in areas 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:17.920 where there is a big dependency on rye bread for food, 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:21.240 and so you're gonna have Also, you have areas where 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:24.040 like one baker may be providing the entire town's bread. 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:27.600 So you have cases where entire medieval towns suffered from 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:31.080 this um. I mean, it was it was an epidemic. Um. 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:34.319 On top of that, it tended to target the poorer 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:38.800 um portions of the population because the dirty your grain, 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:41.600 the less choice you have in your your grain source 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:44.160 and your bread. Uh, the more likely you are to 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:48.559 to encounter urgotism. Well, you know, that made me wonder, 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:53.760 actually how long ergotism has been a problem for grass 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.240 eating animals on Earth. Because one of the things that 0:12:56.960 --> 0:12:59.079 is certainly true is it's not just humans that get it. 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:01.280 I mean, people don't just get it from rye cereals 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:05.520 and rye bread and stuff. Animals get it. Livestock can 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:11.000 suffer from gangrenous ergitism just from eating infected grasses and grains. 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:15.839 And apparently this might go back a really long time. 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:18.920 I was wondering just how long his old clavicep has 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:23.200 been attacking hungry grass eaters with its overwintering structures. Well, 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:25.920 we know the existence of ergot is tied to the 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:29.600 existence of its host, which is grass, And until recently, 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:33.480 we actually didn't know exactly how old grass was. I 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.640 thought that was kind of weird, but that was true. 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:39.360 We didn't know exactly how far back this plant went. 0:13:40.040 --> 0:13:43.840 According to a report in the journal Paleo Diversity, a 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:48.400 chunk of amber from Mayan Mark contains a preserved sample 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:53.880 of fungus structure very similar to ergat atop a grass spikelet. 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:56.320 That's a structure at the top of the grass. You 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:59.120 know that we uh where the argot would be manifest 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:04.480 and this positions urget fungus around a hundred million years old, 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:11.679 so well within the Cretaceous period, which means dinosaurs. Okay, 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:15.600 so we don't know exactly if dinosaurs ate this stuff, 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:19.200 and we don't know exactly what effect this stuff would 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:21.280 have had on dinosaurs who ate it if they did 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:24.640 eat it, but if they reacted anything like the mammals 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:27.800 who eat it, that leads us to imagine a bizarre 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:33.960 landscape of Cretaceous herbivores like triceratops at twenty thou pounds 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:39.600 having nightmarish hallucinations and doing the st Vitus dance. Wow, 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.960 I mean, I shouldn't laugh, poor poor creature. But but 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:45.160 at the same time, you have to imagine this uh, 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:48.600 this psychotic substance that we uh. We end up focusing 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:51.400 a lot on how it affects the human mind and 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:54.280 perception of self and even our religion. But to imagine 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:58.720 a dinosaur, or encountering at a dinosaur essentially uh engaging 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:03.640 in a dangerous um psychedelic substance, It's ah, it's pretty 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:06.480 mind blowing, mind blowing. Would be a word for it. Now. 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:10.040 Of course, the human relationship with ergotism also seems to 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:13.520 go back very far. Oh yeah, it gets it gets 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:16.720 interesting because you know, you also deal with the situations where, 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:19.080 all right, if it is every it's only going to 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:23.400 show up in places where you actually have civilizations consuming 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:27.040 a lot of rye Um. There are Assyrian tablets from 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:30.560 around the six hundred BC that speak of a quote 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:35.480 noxious pustule in the ear of grain. There um. We 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:41.280 also see South Asian zoroastron texts that right of quote 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:44.240 grasses that cause pregnant women to drop the womb and 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:47.520 die in childbirth, and those are from around four hundred 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:50.760 BC to three hundred BC. But then, you know, we 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:52.960 turned to the Greeks and Romans, who we often depend 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:55.760 on for, you know, accounts of of happenings in the 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:58.520 ancient world, and they were not big on rye bread, 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:02.360 so they make no mention of it um, which of 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:04.840 course really cuts into our ability to track it through 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:09.000 the ancient world. And yet the Greeks do, and this 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:12.680 is kind of arguable, but the Greeks do give us 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:16.240 the myth of the temple of el Usus, devoted to 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:20.800 the cult of Demeter and Persephone a literal descent into hell. 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:25.800 If you remember that story with Persephone abducted by Hades, etcetera. 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:29.720 On the temple is a literal descent into hell. No, no, no, 0:16:29.840 --> 0:16:33.560 that the myth is a little exactly yeah. Um, but 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:37.640 but they're they're concerned with with this story. Uh, the 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.040 myth of the Temple's right. Yeah, so not to to 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:44.280 rehatch the whole story, but of course it involves essentially 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:48.720 springtime and summer being kidnapped by Hades and the inevitable 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:52.040 cycles of seasons that of course ties into agriculture. And 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:55.040 this is an old agrarian cult. And in order to 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:57.840 enter this temple, you had to fast, you had to rest, 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.640 you had to make sacrifices, and you also drank something 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:06.400 called kai kion, which is a strange purple potion. Um. 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:12.240 And again think of clouds proparia resulting in tears, hallucinations, tremors, 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:16.040 and sweats and so some suggest that this might have 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:20.600 been derived from cloud steps proparia. And uh and who 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:24.000 better than an ancient agrarian cult to utilize the reality 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:26.919 warping powers of a crop fucus? Right, Yeah, this points 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:30.080 out one thing that's especially scary. I think I couldn't 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:31.960 quite put my finger on what it was earlier in 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:35.400 this episode, but the way in which agriculture is so 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:40.080 deeply tied to civilization, Like in some ways, agriculture is 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:43.520 sort of the definition of civilization. When do civilization arise, 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.280 it's when we settle down and grow crops, and what 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:50.040 are our main crops their grains. Then also there is 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:53.840 the fact that much like you're pointing out here, many 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.720 of the world's religions, and especially many ancient religions, have 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:02.119 deeply agricultural themes that are based on grains. That you know, 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.760 there are death and rebirth cycles of the gods and 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:08.480 of the ancient heroes that are based on the cycles 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:11.760 of seasons, the growth of crops in the harvest. Yeah, indeed, 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:14.159 I mean you see that transition from the old gods 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:16.560 of the hunt, the chaotic gods of the hunt. I 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:18.879 don't know what my next meal is going to reach me. 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:21.160 It depends entirely on what kind of animal I can kill, 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.800 to this more dependable, cyclical nature in the very the 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:27.480 grarian gods that go with it. Yeah, So it's obvious 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.320 that over time the notion of agriculture has been deeply 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:35.239 ingrained in us, like pun not intended, deeply sort of 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:39.080 injected into our minds and and into our cultures, so 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:43.479 that it even shows up in our mythological and magical symbols. 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:46.840 So the idea that our grain can be corrupted in 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:50.359 a way that that makes us sea hell, you know, 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:53.760 and feel burning in our bodies is so is so 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:59.240 perverse and unpleasant and disruptive of what society should be, 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:03.400 which is safty instability. Yeah, of course, during the fact 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:06.000 that agriculture itself is kind of a perversion of a 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:08.760 natural process for our benefit. Yeah, that's a good point. 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:12.959 So anyway, it's not until the Christian era that urgantism 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:16.600 is actually described in surviving accounts. Again, uh, and this 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:19.359 is around the time when rise introduced into Western Europe. 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:23.080 So are very early outbreaks of urgotism. We see them 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:26.280 documented in the Rhine Valley in the year eight fifty seven. 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:29.840 And again it disproportionately affects the poor, who had less 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:32.960 choice about you know, their grain sources and their how 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:37.160 dirty their grain is. Um and urg It was most 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:40.439 common when a harsh winter followed a cool, wet spring, 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:43.560 because many would exhaust their food supplies and they'd be 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:46.320 forced to eat the infected grain. Okay, so they knew 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.840 something might not be great about the grain that had 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:52.000 lots of erg it in it. Yeah, just the the 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:54.800 dirtier grain. Yeah, there was. They weren't able to like 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:57.359 completely put everything together, but there were there was some 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:00.880 ideas about it. Um. And then from around nine hundred 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:05.600 uh ce when records uh evidently became more common in 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.520 what is now France and Germany, to around uh hundred, 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:12.840 see you see severe epidemics of urgotism affecting large areas 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:17.000 every five to ten years. Yeah, and of course it 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:20.439 becomes such an issue that in ten ninety three you 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.119 see the founding of a religious order, the Order of 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:26.840 hospital Ers of Saint Anthony, founded in southern France to 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:30.199 help those afflicted. Uh. Saint Anthony is of course the 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:33.359 patron saint of skin diseases, and that the malady itself 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:37.080 was named Saint Anthony's Fire. Uh. Anthony of course is 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:41.720 said to face supernatural temptations kind of hallucinatory U encounters. 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:44.680 So this is of course a favorite subject in Western 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:47.960 art from the medieval period onward, which makes him even 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:51.200 more suitable for this so the monks built over three 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:55.919 hundred seventy hospitals, and those who came often found some 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:59.640 relief from urgotism. Uh, though it's kind of you can 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:01.359 kind to get into the situation. How much of it 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:04.040 is they're treating of the skin ailments, and they also 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:07.680 treated other skin ailments beside or beside organism. But then 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:10.720 also while you're under their care, you're probably not continuing 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:14.920 to consume that rye bread while you're under the care 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:18.800 of the hospitalers, so that can contribute to your recovery. 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:23.280 Then you go back home and you're back restarted. Yet 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:25.520 another reason. It seems like we're all rather fortunate we 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:29.480 don't live in medieval Europe. Um. And of course you 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.320 have other things that are occurring of probably due to 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:34.920 organism as well as all of our Sacks points out 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:38.600 in his excellent book Hallucinations. Uh. Some historians attribute organ 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:41.840 poisoning as a possible factor much later, with the Salem 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:44.880 witch hysteria in the New World, but it may also 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:48.359 explain the dancing plagues reported between the fourteenth and seventeenth 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:54.040 century as well. So individuals suddenly behaving erratically in mass Uh. 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:56.480 You get into arguments, is this mass hysteria. Is this 0:21:56.560 --> 0:22:01.159 more of a you know, a social contagion, or is 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:04.720 it indeed tied to the consumption of ergot and and 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:07.680 and and suffering from convulsive ergotism. Yeah, and obviously we 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:09.960 don't have the answer there. I think a lot of 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:12.600 people are skeptical of the idea that ergot caused the 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:15.240 dancing manias. If you're not familiar, you should look these 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:18.080 up there. They're crazy, the the ideas that you know, 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:21.200 in random places throughout Europe in the medieval period, you'd 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:25.320 have suddenly lots of people would just start dancing and 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:29.040 it seemed they seemed possessed in some way like that 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:32.639 they couldn't stop, and people were afraid they didn't know 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:36.119 what was going on. And now, I mean, I don't 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:39.040 really see phenomenon like that occurring today, so I don't 0:22:39.080 --> 0:22:41.080 even really know what I could compare it to. Well, 0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:45.040 there you do see accounts of mass hysteria um and 0:22:45.560 --> 0:22:47.240 we actually have an episode on this off the link 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:49.879 to on the the landing page of this episode. You 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:51.960 do see accounts where you'll say, I have a group 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:56.560 of school children at at at a academy somewhere, and 0:22:56.600 --> 0:22:59.120 they all believe they'd come down with an illness when 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:02.719 there's actually no this that sort of thing. Um uh. 0:23:03.320 --> 0:23:07.119 Also in the past, you know a few centuries accounts 0:23:07.119 --> 0:23:10.480 of everyone in a particular area claiming to see some 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:12.879 sort of supernatural event, to all really see it or 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:15.199 is it just kind of this this group, you know, 0:23:15.240 --> 0:23:18.320 this collective hysteria that's taking over them. Yeah, So the 0:23:18.359 --> 0:23:20.720 general hypothesis is that it might have had something to 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:22.560 do with some of these dancing manias. We don't know. 0:23:22.720 --> 0:23:25.520 But the specific one about the Salem which trials is interesting. 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:30.040 How exactly does the does the ergot theory come in here? Yes, 0:23:30.119 --> 0:23:34.080 some historians feel that it's entirely possible that Elizabeth Paris, 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:36.959 the first girl to to fall ill, actually suffered from 0:23:37.000 --> 0:23:39.119 some sort of ergot poisoning and then the rest of 0:23:39.119 --> 0:23:42.920 the girls um took the opportunity to stave off their 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:46.639 boredom uh and and engage in this kind of persecution. 0:23:46.680 --> 0:23:49.840 It it kind of drives home like the problem of 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:52.120 pointing out any kind of strange occurrence in the past 0:23:52.160 --> 0:23:54.119 and saying, oh, well, this was this poisoning, or this 0:23:54.200 --> 0:23:57.040 was a psychedelic or or what have you, because ultimately 0:23:57.040 --> 0:24:01.040 the social dynamics of these situations are airly complex and 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:04.120 there can be multiple energies feeding into them. Yeah. Yeah, 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:06.760