Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe listeners.
Speaker 1: Imagine yourself a time traveling wonderer in the sixteenth Citree.
Speaker 1: It's a time of horror and wonder, of budding possibilities
Speaker 1: for a more informed age, as well uh as pools
Speaker 1: of lingering shadow and superstition. You come to the Monastery
Speaker 1: of Saint Anthony in Eisenheim, near Colmar and what is
Speaker 1: now modern day France. Now what do you expect to find?
Speaker 1: It's such a monastery. How is your education and entertainment
Speaker 1: prepared you for such a place? Pious robed brothers praying
Speaker 1: before elaborate altars, studious monks secluded in their libraries and
Speaker 1: scriptoriums ah. But here you encounter the stinch of illness
Speaker 1: and corruption. You hear the cries of the pain than
Speaker 1: the mad. You find the hospital brothers of Saint Anthony
Speaker 1: as they tirelessly treat victims of plague, skin disease, and
Speaker 1: especially that condition known as Saint Anthony's fire or urgic poisoning.
Speaker 1: As you make your way through the monastery, you glimpse
Speaker 1: of blackened limbs, you hear psychotic cries, voices describing hallucination
Speaker 1: straight from some surrealistic vision of hell, and as you
Speaker 1: enter the sanctuary yourself, you glimpse and altar unlike anything
Speaker 1: you've imagined before. Behold the Eisenheim altarpiece of Matthias Grunwald
Speaker 1: in its current configuration. The great folding work of art
Speaker 1: presents a familiar motif, Jesus Christ crucified at Golgotha, but
Speaker 1: it's easily the most grotesque image of Christ you've ever seen.
Speaker 1: You'd be tempted to think it blasphemous, even for Christ's
Speaker 1: skin is dark at times, greenish, gangrenous, covered in sores
Speaker 1: in addition to the familiar wounds of execution. Because this
Speaker 1: work of art, this interpretation of absolute human death and suffering,
Speaker 1: emerges from the ravages of ergotism. Ergotism, so that's going
Speaker 1: to be the subject today. But I've seen this work
Speaker 1: of art you're talking about, You've called attention to it
Speaker 1: before Gruenwald's Diseased Christ, and it looks like something that is,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, intended to be blasphemous. It looks
Speaker 1: like something from a metal album insert. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're flipping through the pages of the CD insert and
Speaker 1: it's got a pentagram, and it's got like a you know,
Speaker 1: crucified goat with blood everywhere, and then it's got this
Speaker 1: diseased Jesus with with you know, sores and this greenish body.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like your traditional image of the of
Speaker 1: pious Christ, right, Yeah, it's and it's it's fascinating and
Speaker 1: it it is. When we get into it, you'll see
Speaker 1: that it is a very pious image. It was not
Speaker 1: created out of any sense of you know, blasphemous outrage,
Speaker 1: but it does look like zombie Jesus. Yeah, So what
Speaker 1: is Ergot And what in the world would something called
Speaker 1: Ergot have to do with a diseased Christ from a
Speaker 1: metal album insert? So imagine you're walking through a grain
Speaker 1: field with tall stalks of rye all around you, and
Speaker 1: so we're not all that close to the agriculture that
Speaker 1: sustains our lives anymore. Rye might actually need some explanation.
Speaker 1: It is a cultivated grass crops, so it's like wheat
Speaker 1: or barley, and we can use rye to make bread's beer, whiskey.
Speaker 1: The scientific name of this plant is secale cereal l A.
Speaker 1: I think secale and then like cereal with any at
Speaker 1: the end. So you're a body meeting a body coming
Speaker 1: through the rye, and you notice that on some of
Speaker 1: the stalks of the grass of the rye, where the
Speaker 1: little rye grains would normally be poking out of the stalk,
Speaker 1: there are instead these long, dark, purple to black fingers
Speaker 1: reaching into the air like twisted, deformed little uh mockery's
Speaker 1: of the seeds that should be in this plant. One
Speaker 1: are these things? Well, each of these little fingers is
Speaker 1: an ergot, or another name for them in science would
Speaker 1: be the sclerotium. It's a piece of fungal tissue, so
Speaker 1: it's mushroom in nature fungus, and it grows when the
Speaker 1: grain is infected with the fungus Claviceps perpurea, and that's
Speaker 1: a parasite that infects the ovaries, the female sex organs
Speaker 1: of the plant. In grasses and the host is most
Speaker 1: soften rye, but other grasses and grains can fall victim
Speaker 1: to ergot. This is so common in rye that people
Speaker 1: actually thought it was a part of the grain up
Speaker 1: until the eighteen fifties when we really began to understand
Speaker 1: the true fungal nature of the ergot, which is something
Speaker 1: to keep in mind as we discussed the problems that
Speaker 1: are mgered from human consumption of ergan. Exactly right. And
Speaker 1: so we're gonna get to the human consumption in a minute,
Speaker 1: because that's central to the podcast. But first we should
Speaker 1: actually talk about what this thing is, what does it
Speaker 1: due to the plants because nobody, nobody cares about the plants.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that really suffer. So the urga itself,
Speaker 1: what is this thing's little black, purple black finger poking
Speaker 1: up out of the rye stalk. The urg it itself
Speaker 1: is what's known as an overwintering structure. It so it's
Speaker 1: this protective architecture that allows the fungus to survive through
Speaker 1: the freezing season and make it to the next stage
Speaker 1: in its reproductive cycle. Uh and clavisups produces both sexual
Speaker 1: and asexual spores to spread and infect new hosts. When
Speaker 1: the fungal infection cycle begins, you'll often see do forming
Speaker 1: on the ovaries of the host plants. You know where
Speaker 1: where the seed and grain structure is, and this sticky
Speaker 1: residue is a mixture of the plant's own sap and
Speaker 1: then a sexually produced fungal spores called canidia. And these
Speaker 1: a sexual spores can in effect other hosts when they're
Speaker 1: spread by physical contact, so on the bodies of insects,
Speaker 1: or even by the splashes of rain drops. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've seen anything about how some parasites spread
Speaker 1: from plant to plant by the rain. And the rain
Speaker 1: hits the plant, it splashes the parasite everywhere onto the
Speaker 1: plants next to it, So that's one method of transmission.
Speaker 1: But then as the seed head matures, some of it's
Speaker 1: normally healthy grains are replaced by these ergo it's or sclerotia,
Speaker 1: which are designed to keep the fungal parasite alive through
Speaker 1: the cold months. When the spring arrives, the surviving ergot
Speaker 1: sprout multiple stromata, which are these stalks with little knobs
Speaker 1: at the end, and they look more like what you
Speaker 1: think of when you hear the word mushroom. There the
Speaker 1: stromata singular stroma produced sexual spores as opposed to the
Speaker 1: a sexual spores produced at the earlier stage called asco spores,
Speaker 1: and once the spores are developed, they get spit out
Speaker 1: into the air to carry on the circle of life
Speaker 1: of fungus, and so, like wind driven pollen, they get
Speaker 1: caught in the stigma of other host plants and go
Speaker 1: on to infect new grass ovaries. So that's the story
Speaker 1: of Claviceps purpurea. It's not trying to get into you.
Speaker 1: It's trying to get into the rye. It wants to
Speaker 1: spread from plant to plant like a plague upon the
Speaker 1: earth and become the zombie virus that that is the
Speaker 1: rye apocalypse. But that is not actually the end of
Speaker 1: the story. Because let's say we're back walking through this
Speaker 1: field of infected rye, and instead of just walking through
Speaker 1: the field, you're walking through the field with a scythe
Speaker 1: and you're harvesting these ergan infested stalks, fungus fingers and all,
Speaker 1: and you take it home and you turn it into
Speaker 1: some delicious rye bread for you and your family to eat,
Speaker 1: pastrami sandwiches. On what's going to happen to you? Well,
Speaker 1: some bad stuff can happen um And in this we
Speaker 1: get into sort of the complexities of of ergotism and
Speaker 1: ergot poisoning, because we have essentially two different forms of
Speaker 1: ergotism that can occur. Yeah, so in these overwintering structures. Uh,
Speaker 1: these little black fingers, they're toxic alkaloids and they can
Speaker 1: have various types of effects. Right, Yeah, there are essentially
Speaker 1: there are different strains of the of the organism that
Speaker 1: have different effects when consumed. So on one hand you
Speaker 1: have gangrenous ergotism, which is as horrible as it sounds.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that ergotism is essentially a
Speaker 1: vase of constrictor, so it constricts the blood vessels, so
Speaker 1: it can severely limit the blood flow to the extremities,
Speaker 1: which can result in a range of symptoms. Um, you
Speaker 1: can get nausea, limb pain and this, Uh, this particular
Speaker 1: pain in the limbs is often described as having a
Speaker 1: burning sensation, which earned it the nickname ignis say holy
Speaker 1: fire and this and it can also cause the skin
Speaker 1: to appeal. Blisters to you occur all over and then
Speaker 1: this can essentially even lead to to to gang green
Speaker 1: occurring because again the blood vessels are constricted, it's less
Speaker 1: blood reaching the extremities, and these extremities can then turn
Speaker 1: black and mummified, causing the infected limbs to spontaneously break
Speaker 1: off at the joints. But there's no pain involved in
Speaker 1: this because it's just been cut off, so it's already dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just dead tissue at this point, but it's still rotting.
Speaker 1: It's still that the stinch can still be just completely unbearable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so just imagine that, because you ate the regular food
Speaker 1: from your regular food supply coming in maybe through your
Speaker 1: town bakery or something like that, you end up with
Speaker 1: mummified feet or mummified hands and you're still alive, but
Speaker 1: you've got blackened limbs that burn it first, then turn
Speaker 1: black like a mummy and fall off. Yeah. It's what
Speaker 1: kind of surreal life is this? It's terrifying, especially when
Speaker 1: you think about it coming from consuming because we so
Speaker 1: often don't think of bread as being this dangerous thing
Speaker 1: because it's such an artificial food substance, right, right, it's
Speaker 1: not like maynnai is left out in the sun that
Speaker 1: you can just you know, we quickly think of as
Speaker 1: like that's going to be a problem in your body, Right,
Speaker 1: it's bread, what could go wrong? Okay, So that's gangernous sarchetism.
Speaker 1: But then there's also convulsive evergotism, and this is the
Speaker 1: nervous dysfunction variant UH, and this can also result in
Speaker 1: a host of horrible things such as vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy,
Speaker 1: the sensation of ants and spiders crawling all over your body,
Speaker 1: what painful seizures, twitching, spasms, convulsions, blindness, deafness, um and
Speaker 1: generally that the gastro intestinal symptoms that I mentioned. Those
Speaker 1: proceed a full blown central nervous system condition, and in
Speaker 1: its in extremes, you're also encountering hallucinations, mania and psychosis.
Speaker 1: Can you get both strains at the same time? Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: that's where it gets even because I'm one, hay. Do
Speaker 1: you have the mummified stinking flesh rotting variant, then you
Speaker 1: have the madness, spiders all over me, and I'm in
Speaker 1: just a psychotic collusiontory state. And indeed, um they can
Speaker 1: occur concurrently, so you can get a mixed form. Though
Speaker 1: historically we tend to see geographic areas in Europe with
Speaker 1: greater tendency towards one form of the these versus the other,
Speaker 1: because again we're looking at slightly different strains of the
Speaker 1: fungus causing either a convulsive organginous organism. And then there's
Speaker 1: Also this the ergic stage of the fungus contains a
Speaker 1: storehouse of various compounds, ranging from the benign to even
Speaker 1: as well discussed beneficial uh. And since the proportions of
Speaker 1: the compound vary even within the species, the same person
Speaker 1: might experience different symptoms on a subsequent consumption of the
Speaker 1: same ergic strain. So you're just kind of rolling the
Speaker 1: like awful dungeon master dice every time you come across
Speaker 1: some erg it in your bread. That's so scary. And
Speaker 1: also just combine this with the fact that it was
Speaker 1: so common in the medieval period, and you can just
Speaker 1: imagine the confusion and the terror that went along with
Speaker 1: all of this suffering. Yeah, because you have in areas
Speaker 1: where there is a big dependency on rye bread for food,
Speaker 1: and so you're gonna have Also, you have areas where
Speaker 1: like one baker may be providing the entire town's bread.
Speaker 1: So you have cases where entire medieval towns suffered from
Speaker 1: this um. I mean, it was it was an epidemic. Um.
Speaker 1: On top of that, it tended to target the poorer
Speaker 1: um portions of the population because the dirty your grain,
Speaker 1: the less choice you have in your your grain source
Speaker 1: and your bread. Uh, the more likely you are to
Speaker 1: to encounter urgotism. Well, you know, that made me wonder,
Speaker 1: actually how long ergotism has been a problem for grass
Speaker 1: eating animals on Earth. Because one of the things that
Speaker 1: is certainly true is it's not just humans that get it.
Speaker 1: I mean, people don't just get it from rye cereals
Speaker 1: and rye bread and stuff. Animals get it. Livestock can
Speaker 1: suffer from gangrenous ergitism just from eating infected grasses and grains.
Speaker 1: And apparently this might go back a really long time.
Speaker 1: I was wondering just how long his old clavicep has
Speaker 1: been attacking hungry grass eaters with its overwintering structures. Well,
Speaker 1: we know the existence of ergot is tied to the
Speaker 1: existence of its host, which is grass, And until recently,
Speaker 1: we actually didn't know exactly how old grass was. I
Speaker 1: thought that was kind of weird, but that was true.
Speaker 1: We didn't know exactly how far back this plant went.
Speaker 1: According to a report in the journal Paleo Diversity, a
Speaker 1: chunk of amber from Mayan Mark contains a preserved sample
Speaker 1: of fungus structure very similar to ergat atop a grass spikelet.
Speaker 1: That's a structure at the top of the grass. You
Speaker 1: know that we uh where the argot would be manifest
Speaker 1: and this positions urget fungus around a hundred million years old,
Speaker 1: so well within the Cretaceous period, which means dinosaurs. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we don't know exactly if dinosaurs ate this stuff,
Speaker 1: and we don't know exactly what effect this stuff would
Speaker 1: have had on dinosaurs who ate it if they did
Speaker 1: eat it, but if they reacted anything like the mammals
Speaker 1: who eat it, that leads us to imagine a bizarre
Speaker 1: landscape of Cretaceous herbivores like triceratops at twenty thou pounds
Speaker 1: having nightmarish hallucinations and doing the st Vitus dance. Wow,
Speaker 1: I mean, I shouldn't laugh, poor poor creature. But but
Speaker 1: at the same time, you have to imagine this uh,
Speaker 1: this psychotic substance that we uh. We end up focusing
Speaker 1: a lot on how it affects the human mind and
Speaker 1: perception of self and even our religion. But to imagine
Speaker 1: a dinosaur, or encountering at a dinosaur essentially uh engaging
Speaker 1: in a dangerous um psychedelic substance, It's ah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: mind blowing, mind blowing. Would be a word for it. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, the human relationship with ergotism also seems to
Speaker 1: go back very far. Oh yeah, it gets it gets
Speaker 1: interesting because you know, you also deal with the situations where,
Speaker 1: all right, if it is every it's only going to
Speaker 1: show up in places where you actually have civilizations consuming
Speaker 1: a lot of rye Um. There are Assyrian tablets from
Speaker 1: around the six hundred BC that speak of a quote
Speaker 1: noxious pustule in the ear of grain. There um. We
Speaker 1: also see South Asian zoroastron texts that right of quote
Speaker 1: grasses that cause pregnant women to drop the womb and
Speaker 1: die in childbirth, and those are from around four hundred
Speaker 1: BC to three hundred BC. But then, you know, we
Speaker 1: turned to the Greeks and Romans, who we often depend
Speaker 1: on for, you know, accounts of of happenings in the
Speaker 1: ancient world, and they were not big on rye bread,
Speaker 1: so they make no mention of it um, which of
Speaker 1: course really cuts into our ability to track it through
Speaker 1: the ancient world. And yet the Greeks do, and this
Speaker 1: is kind of arguable, but the Greeks do give us
Speaker 1: the myth of the temple of el Usus, devoted to
Speaker 1: the cult of Demeter and Persephone a literal descent into hell.
Speaker 1: If you remember that story with Persephone abducted by Hades, etcetera.
Speaker 1: On the temple is a literal descent into hell. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that the myth is a little exactly yeah. Um, but
Speaker 1: but they're they're concerned with with this story. Uh, the
Speaker 1: myth of the Temple's right. Yeah, so not to to
Speaker 1: rehatch the whole story, but of course it involves essentially
Speaker 1: springtime and summer being kidnapped by Hades and the inevitable
Speaker 1: cycles of seasons that of course ties into agriculture. And
Speaker 1: this is an old agrarian cult. And in order to
Speaker 1: enter this temple, you had to fast, you had to rest,
Speaker 1: you had to make sacrifices, and you also drank something
Speaker 1: called kai kion, which is a strange purple potion. Um.
Speaker 1: And again think of clouds proparia resulting in tears, hallucinations, tremors,
Speaker 1: and sweats and so some suggest that this might have
Speaker 1: been derived from cloud steps proparia. And uh and who
Speaker 1: better than an ancient agrarian cult to utilize the reality
Speaker 1: warping powers of a crop fucus? Right, Yeah, this points
Speaker 1: out one thing that's especially scary. I think I couldn't
Speaker 1: quite put my finger on what it was earlier in
Speaker 1: this episode, but the way in which agriculture is so
Speaker 1: deeply tied to civilization, Like in some ways, agriculture is
Speaker 1: sort of the definition of civilization. When do civilization arise,
Speaker 1: it's when we settle down and grow crops, and what
Speaker 1: are our main crops their grains. Then also there is
Speaker 1: the fact that much like you're pointing out here, many
Speaker 1: of the world's religions, and especially many ancient religions, have
Speaker 1: deeply agricultural themes that are based on grains. That you know,
Speaker 1: there are death and rebirth cycles of the gods and
Speaker 1: of the ancient heroes that are based on the cycles
Speaker 1: of seasons, the growth of crops in the harvest. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: I mean you see that transition from the old gods
Speaker 1: of the hunt, the chaotic gods of the hunt. I
Speaker 1: don't know what my next meal is going to reach me.
Speaker 1: It depends entirely on what kind of animal I can kill,
Speaker 1: to this more dependable, cyclical nature in the very the
Speaker 1: grarian gods that go with it. Yeah, So it's obvious
Speaker 1: that over time the notion of agriculture has been deeply
Speaker 1: ingrained in us, like pun not intended, deeply sort of
Speaker 1: injected into our minds and and into our cultures, so
Speaker 1: that it even shows up in our mythological and magical symbols.
Speaker 1: So the idea that our grain can be corrupted in
Speaker 1: a way that that makes us sea hell, you know,
Speaker 1: and feel burning in our bodies is so is so
Speaker 1: perverse and unpleasant and disruptive of what society should be,
Speaker 1: which is safty instability. Yeah, of course, during the fact
Speaker 1: that agriculture itself is kind of a perversion of a
Speaker 1: natural process for our benefit. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it's not until the Christian era that urgantism
Speaker 1: is actually described in surviving accounts. Again, uh, and this
Speaker 1: is around the time when rise introduced into Western Europe.
Speaker 1: So are very early outbreaks of urgotism. We see them
Speaker 1: documented in the Rhine Valley in the year eight fifty seven.
Speaker 1: And again it disproportionately affects the poor, who had less
Speaker 1: choice about you know, their grain sources and their how
Speaker 1: dirty their grain is. Um and urg It was most
Speaker 1: common when a harsh winter followed a cool, wet spring,
Speaker 1: because many would exhaust their food supplies and they'd be
Speaker 1: forced to eat the infected grain. Okay, so they knew
Speaker 1: something might not be great about the grain that had
Speaker 1: lots of erg it in it. Yeah, just the the
Speaker 1: dirtier grain. Yeah, there was. They weren't able to like
Speaker 1: completely put everything together, but there were there was some
Speaker 1: ideas about it. Um. And then from around nine hundred
Speaker 1: uh ce when records uh evidently became more common in
Speaker 1: what is now France and Germany, to around uh hundred,
Speaker 1: see you see severe epidemics of urgotism affecting large areas
Speaker 1: every five to ten years. Yeah, and of course it
Speaker 1: becomes such an issue that in ten ninety three you
Speaker 1: see the founding of a religious order, the Order of
Speaker 1: hospital Ers of Saint Anthony, founded in southern France to
Speaker 1: help those afflicted. Uh. Saint Anthony is of course the
Speaker 1: patron saint of skin diseases, and that the malady itself
Speaker 1: was named Saint Anthony's Fire. Uh. Anthony of course is
Speaker 1: said to face supernatural temptations kind of hallucinatory U encounters.
Speaker 1: So this is of course a favorite subject in Western
Speaker 1: art from the medieval period onward, which makes him even
Speaker 1: more suitable for this so the monks built over three
Speaker 1: hundred seventy hospitals, and those who came often found some
Speaker 1: relief from urgotism. Uh, though it's kind of you can
Speaker 1: kind to get into the situation. How much of it
Speaker 1: is they're treating of the skin ailments, and they also
Speaker 1: treated other skin ailments beside or beside organism. But then
Speaker 1: also while you're under their care, you're probably not continuing
Speaker 1: to consume that rye bread while you're under the care
Speaker 1: of the hospitalers, so that can contribute to your recovery.
Speaker 1: Then you go back home and you're back restarted. Yet
Speaker 1: another reason. It seems like we're all rather fortunate we
Speaker 1: don't live in medieval Europe. Um. And of course you
Speaker 1: have other things that are occurring of probably due to
Speaker 1: organism as well as all of our Sacks points out
Speaker 1: in his excellent book Hallucinations. Uh. Some historians attribute organ
Speaker 1: poisoning as a possible factor much later, with the Salem
Speaker 1: witch hysteria in the New World, but it may also
Speaker 1: explain the dancing plagues reported between the fourteenth and seventeenth
Speaker 1: century as well. So individuals suddenly behaving erratically in mass Uh.
Speaker 1: You get into arguments, is this mass hysteria. Is this
Speaker 1: more of a you know, a social contagion, or is
Speaker 1: it indeed tied to the consumption of ergot and and
Speaker 1: and and suffering from convulsive ergotism. Yeah, and obviously we
Speaker 1: don't have the answer there. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are skeptical of the idea that ergot caused the
Speaker 1: dancing manias. If you're not familiar, you should look these
Speaker 1: up there. They're crazy, the the ideas that you know,
Speaker 1: in random places throughout Europe in the medieval period, you'd
Speaker 1: have suddenly lots of people would just start dancing and
Speaker 1: it seemed they seemed possessed in some way like that
Speaker 1: they couldn't stop, and people were afraid they didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going on. And now, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: really see phenomenon like that occurring today, so I don't
Speaker 1: even really know what I could compare it to. Well,
Speaker 1: there you do see accounts of mass hysteria um and
Speaker 1: we actually have an episode on this off the link
Speaker 1: to on the the landing page of this episode. You
Speaker 1: do see accounts where you'll say, I have a group
Speaker 1: of school children at at at a academy somewhere, and
Speaker 1: they all believe they'd come down with an illness when
Speaker 1: there's actually no this that sort of thing. Um uh.
Speaker 1: Also in the past, you know a few centuries accounts
Speaker 1: of everyone in a particular area claiming to see some
Speaker 1: sort of supernatural event, to all really see it or
Speaker 1: is it just kind of this this group, you know,
Speaker 1: this collective hysteria that's taking over them. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: general hypothesis is that it might have had something to
Speaker 1: do with some of these dancing manias. We don't know.
Speaker 1: But the specific one about the Salem which trials is interesting.
Speaker 1: How exactly does the does the ergot theory come in here? Yes,
Speaker 1: some historians feel that it's entirely possible that Elizabeth Paris,
Speaker 1: the first girl to to fall ill, actually suffered from
Speaker 1: some sort of ergot poisoning and then the rest of
Speaker 1: the girls um took the opportunity to stave off their
Speaker 1: boredom uh and and engage in this kind of persecution.
Speaker 1: It it kind of drives home like the problem of
Speaker 1: pointing out any kind of strange occurrence in the past
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, well, this was this poisoning, or this
Speaker 1: was a psychedelic or or what have you, because ultimately
Speaker 1: the social dynamics of these situations are airly complex and
Speaker 1: there can be multiple energies feeding into them. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: psychohistory is a very difficult thing to try to do.
Speaker 1: Didn't Josh Clark write something about this for the website?
Speaker 1: He did? He wrote where the American Colonists drugged during
Speaker 1: the Salem Witch Trials? And in it he he points
Speaker 1: out that, you know, one of the criticisms with some
Speaker 1: of these the theories, uh, you know, raises the question
Speaker 1: why only the girls, why not the others? Why only
Speaker 1: six two? Why not previous years? In later years? So
Speaker 1: when you start trying to say, you know, say urgantism
Speaker 1: is the is the smoking gun here? Uh, there's just
Speaker 1: so many additional questions that arise, like bread, like bread,
Speaker 1: just to make sure we get another vacant well, terrible puns.
Speaker 1: But I mean whether or not it had any role
Speaker 1: to play in dancing manias or the Salem witch Trials,
Speaker 1: it certainly was a real phenomenon that was psychedelic and horrifying. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: we mentioned that by the eighteen fifties we had a
Speaker 1: pretty good understanding of how archetism were the last reported outbreak,
Speaker 1: and this is by no means conclusive. There are alternative
Speaker 1: theories for this as well. Um. The last reported outbreak
Speaker 1: occurred in nineteen fifty one in pont Standard Spreit in
Speaker 1: southern France, in which more than two cases were reported
Speaker 1: along with four deaths. But again that's not cut and
Speaker 1: dry either. So we mentioned the various compounds that are
Speaker 1: that are that are in the uh, the fungus, right,
Speaker 1: they have these alkaloids in them that can cause terrible
Speaker 1: symptoms and diseases. But they can actually be used or
Speaker 1: maybe derivatives from them can be used for legitimate medical purposes,
Speaker 1: can't they They can? Yeah, I mean it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of one of the you know, underlying ideas that any
Speaker 1: kind of particularly powerful substance produced by nature, uh, it
Speaker 1: can be utilized efficiently if if properly managed. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite technology stories is how to use animal
Speaker 1: venom in medicine, like using scorpion venom in medicine to
Speaker 1: treat diseases. Yeah, I mean, we we we have numerous
Speaker 1: cases where we can take something that is in nature, uh,
Speaker 1: this deadly substance, then we can use it for our
Speaker 1: own benefit in a medicine or say a spice of flavoring. Um.
Speaker 1: You know what, what is a spicy pepper added to
Speaker 1: your your taco salad? But for a fun way to
Speaker 1: see something unusual. Yeah, exactly. So with there we get.
Speaker 1: We have a few different compounds of note UM. There's ergonovine.
Speaker 1: This is a compound produced by clavisups Papyria that we've
Speaker 1: used for centuries and even today to um to speed
Speaker 1: up labor prevent postpartum bleeding. And we see it uh
Speaker 1: we and in this we see the uh. The the
Speaker 1: vaso constrictive properties of of er get put to good use,
Speaker 1: and this is typically administered during the third stage of labor.
Speaker 1: And then there's ERGOTAMINEU. This is useful with migraine headaches
Speaker 1: because it reduces extra cranial blood flow. It's also a
Speaker 1: serotonin agonist which can help alleviate the headaches as well.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, they're scientists have looked into
Speaker 1: the possibility that it could be used treating Parkinson's disease
Speaker 1: since ergo is a dopamine agonist, meaning that it increases
Speaker 1: the effects of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain UH.
Speaker 1: In Parkinson's patients, dopamine transmitting neurons die off. So ergic
Speaker 1: derivatives are helpful in boosting the signal between nerve cells
Speaker 1: and the brain. And of course researchers can continue to
Speaker 1: explore uses for compounds produced by the claviceps fungus as well.
Speaker 1: That's right, I mean muscle relax here is potentially a
Speaker 1: treatment of various circulatory diseases UM, and it might even
Speaker 1: work as a possible anti tumor drugs. So you know,
Speaker 1: the work continues. Again, it's a it's powerful substance, and
Speaker 1: scientists continue to continue to come back to it and
Speaker 1: look at possible uses for it. Right, But of course
Speaker 1: we would be remiss if we did not discuss at
Speaker 1: some length the relationship between ergot and psychedelic drugs. That's right, Um,
Speaker 1: l s D in particular. Yeah, so urge actually plays
Speaker 1: a role in the scientific isolation and discovery of L
Speaker 1: s D by the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman. Right. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Back in the nineteen thirties, researchers at the Rockville Institute
Speaker 1: in New York isolated lesurgic acid from an ergic compound,
Speaker 1: and the research was the basis for Albert Hoffman's work
Speaker 1: at Sandas a pharmaceutical company. And uh, and so the
Speaker 1: the roots of LSD, the the roots of of lesergic
Speaker 1: acid lie in the isolation of the compound within it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Albert Hoffman was actually the one in in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen thirties to derive LSD twenty five lessergic acid
Speaker 1: uh diethyla minde. And if we believe the story, it
Speaker 1: was not originally created for the purpose of causing acid trips,
Speaker 1: now that the pharmaceutical companies had other things in mind.
Speaker 1: But but I believe the story is that Hoffman a
Speaker 1: sedentally dosed himself with this while working with it in
Speaker 1: the lab and began to feel weird. He began to
Speaker 1: feel the effects of an LSD trip, and after experiencing
Speaker 1: that once, he was like, oh, that was kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: maybe worth doing some more research, And so he synthesized
Speaker 1: a batch to test on himself, basically right. And so
Speaker 1: I know, you know a number of people are probably wondering,
Speaker 1: what does that mean. I can grow ergic, I can
Speaker 1: cultivate ergic and uh and therefore create my own LSD.
Speaker 1: Well disclaimer, we're not recommending you do this, no, not
Speaker 1: at all. And uh, even if you would you wanted to,
Speaker 1: I think you would probably stall out on this process.
Speaker 1: But uh, according to the vaults of Rowind, which is
Speaker 1: a nonprofit educational organization that provides information about psychoactive plants
Speaker 1: and chemicals, Uh, it's easier to do this than depending
Speaker 1: on morning Glory or Hawaiian baby wood rose for the
Speaker 1: surgic acid amides that you need. Now, we're not gonna
Speaker 1: walk you through the process because it's um it's a
Speaker 1: long process. And and by the way, it includes the
Speaker 1: recommendation quote avoid prolonged contact with the errogant compounds as
Speaker 1: they are poisonous and can be fatal. But suffice to
Speaker 1: say that involves a lot of sterile and chemically specific
Speaker 1: handling of clavists purpruria as a first step in a
Speaker 1: long road to synthesizing lsd YA. So in addition to
Speaker 1: the disclaimer, it's probably gonna be difficult, difficult, and you
Speaker 1: my poison yourself. So maybe just you know, go watch
Speaker 1: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas again instead. There you go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I want to get back to that disease, Jesus, Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: get back to the The Eisenheim altarpiece of German Renaissance
Speaker 1: paider painter at Matthias Gruenwald lived a fourteen seventy through
Speaker 1: and uh, as with a number of these you know
Speaker 1: older masters. You know, we don't know a whole lot
Speaker 1: about his life. Uh. Most mostly his his work is
Speaker 1: what still speaks to us. Right. So one panel illustrates
Speaker 1: the temptation of St. Anthony in grotesque detail, with his
Speaker 1: demon tormentors displaying clear skin ailments that are that are
Speaker 1: clearly inspired by the skin ailments dealt with by the hospitallers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what were the details so that temptation My recollection is
Speaker 1: that he basically went into the into the desert, into
Speaker 1: the wilderness to to pray as you do, and so
Speaker 1: kind of like Christ in the in the Gospel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I I don't recall them making any particular offers,
Speaker 1: like like the whole temptation of Christ. Of course, the
Speaker 1: devil offers the you know, for Jesus to be the
Speaker 1: king of the world and all that. Uh, there's there's
Speaker 1: more of the death and offer on the table where
Speaker 1: I think, uh St Anthony was just plagued by demons.
Speaker 1: Do we get to turn these breads into stone? Or
Speaker 1: now you might want to turn these breads into stones
Speaker 1: if they are urgan infested deeds. Um. So yeah, so St.
Speaker 1: Anthony is very much a part of the altarpiece. But
Speaker 1: then we see this vision of the suffering Christ, which
Speaker 1: we already mentioned, who clearly displays symptoms of the individuals
Speaker 1: that were suffering in the monastery, covered with sores, gangernous flesh.
Speaker 1: Even his hands and feet, uh, even though they're you know,
Speaker 1: pierced by by nails. Uh, they're twisted and convulsed as
Speaker 1: if one was suffering from convulsive right. And so it's
Speaker 1: not part of the religious tradition of any Christians that
Speaker 1: Christ actually suffered from margate poisoning. Like, that's not in
Speaker 1: the Bible. That's not particularly a belief. This was just
Speaker 1: sort of an interpretive lens of Gruenwald's right. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: I mean up until the thirteenth century, the predominant style
Speaker 1: was was to depict Christ not even really suffering at all.
Speaker 1: He would just be up there with his you know,
Speaker 1: his eyes eyes open, seemings seemingly impervious to the physical torments.
Speaker 1: It is only after that that you start displaying Jesus
Speaker 1: as actually suffering, as a human would up there, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just being above it like a God Um.
Speaker 1: So really um, Gruenwald was just taking this uh to
Speaker 1: the local level, you know, because he's surrounded by individuals
Speaker 1: that are are suffering from urgotism and other scan elements,
Speaker 1: and so historians believe that he actually used those patients
Speaker 1: as his subjects, capturing clinical details UH and their abnormal
Speaker 1: postures and using that as the model for not only
Speaker 1: the demons assaulting St. Anthony, but but the suffering of
Speaker 1: Christ himself. That's actually kind of a moving way of
Speaker 1: thinking about how these people were grappling with their religion.
Speaker 1: So if their idea is that, you know, what is
Speaker 1: the significance of Christ, that it's you know, the powerful
Speaker 1: God coming down to earth to suffer with humanity, it
Speaker 1: would make sense that they would they would impart to
Speaker 1: their vision of the suffering Servant, the suffering God, the
Speaker 1: same things they were suffering from. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: a bonding relation and ship they can form with the
Speaker 1: God that they worship. Yeah, I mean, because ultimately you're
Speaker 1: laying there on the floor, you're suffering from urgetism, You're
Speaker 1: being attended to by these hospitallers. What kind of suffering
Speaker 1: Christ do you want to look up at? You? Want
Speaker 1: to see the serene like, oh, I hardly noticed I
Speaker 1: have nails in me. You want to see the Oh
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm crucified, but I'm you know, really buff
Speaker 1: and otherwise healthy. Or do you want to see a
Speaker 1: Christ that is suffering as you suffer? He knows what
Speaker 1: it's like to have the limbs blacken and and to
Speaker 1: feel the igny sassare. Yeah, yeah, I mean I agree.
Speaker 1: I ultimately find it, you know, really really poignant. It
Speaker 1: also makes me wonder how come we don't see like
Speaker 1: a sort of modern first world problems version of Christ
Speaker 1: on the Cross says most of us can't relate to severe, um,
Speaker 1: you know, fleshly torment. Perhaps there's like a vision of
Speaker 1: Christ that could be created where he just doesn't have
Speaker 1: enough bars on his cell phone or is his phone
Speaker 1: running out of batteries, you know, and because that kind
Speaker 1: of suffering the modern millennial can you can relate to,
Speaker 1: Let's not paint that picture. Uh speaking of painting pictures though, Um,
Speaker 1: there are various other artistic interpretations of urgotism. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: one that came up that I was really taken with.
Speaker 1: Then it's just a minor when it's a woodcut, uh
Speaker 1: titled St Anthony's Fire Ergotism by Johannes Vichland and this
Speaker 1: is from around four nine, probably thirties, somewhere in there.
Speaker 1: And we see a man with a flaming ganger in
Speaker 1: his hand, appealing to St. Anthony. So it looks kind
Speaker 1: of like like it reminds me the hand of Glory,
Speaker 1: you know. Oh I haven't seen this. Yeah, yeah, here
Speaker 1: it is. Here's the copy of it. Oh, that is amazing.
Speaker 1: So you have the saint is very tall, and then
Speaker 1: there's like a child sort of at knee level reaching
Speaker 1: up with the crippled limbs, but a flaming hand on
Speaker 1: fire beseeching the saint. And then uh, then there's also
Speaker 1: of course U Hieronymous Bosh, who is an even more
Speaker 1: towering figure in the history of Western art. Yes, so
Speaker 1: the idea here is a little bit different, not so
Speaker 1: much that the artist was inspired by a world of
Speaker 1: people suffering from argotism, but perhaps that the artist might
Speaker 1: have been suffering from argotism himself. Indeed, though, I mean
Speaker 1: there are there are some works by Bosch, such as
Speaker 1: the Procession of the Cripples, which features a number of
Speaker 1: afflicted bodies uh, and at least three of them uh
Speaker 1: seemed to be suffering from organtism. So he did a
Speaker 1: little bit at least of observing argotism in the world
Speaker 1: around him. Sure, I didn't mean to rule that out, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: um And just to put Bosch in his place historically
Speaker 1: fourteen fifty to fifteen sixteen, early, highly highly influential, a
Speaker 1: Netherlandish painter known for his surrealistic, nightmarish and cryptic imagery. Um.
Speaker 1: And this was very much a time when argotism was
Speaker 1: epidemic uh in the Netherlands. Yeah, if you haven't seen
Speaker 1: Bosch's paintings, actually you probably have seen them. Here's here's
Speaker 1: the clue that you're looking at a Bosch painting. Are
Speaker 1: there lots of little people in it? And is it crazy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are there like crazy bird demons, chamber pots on their head?
Speaker 1: Like just those just surrealistic visions of medieval hell coupled
Speaker 1: with the detailed depictions of peasants and stunning realistic landscapes.
Speaker 1: Like that's pretty much Bosch in a nutshell. And you
Speaker 1: would probably see his work uh on like like one
Speaker 1: out of five college dorm room walls. Not to I
Speaker 1: mean not not just to say his work isn't brilliant,
Speaker 1: because it is. I mean, I still I still can get.
Speaker 1: You can just lose myself staring into a Bosch painting
Speaker 1: because there it's also it's just cryptic. There's so many
Speaker 1: symbols at play, many of which would make more sense
Speaker 1: to a contemporary viewer, particularly in the clergy or you know,
Speaker 1: a lay patron. There may be a little more lost
Speaker 1: on us today, but there's a lot going on. Uh
Speaker 1: and in our mind just has to grapple with it.
Speaker 1: When we were one of his paintings, Yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: dark and highly imaginative. They make a rob zombie music
Speaker 1: video look dull by comparison. In fact, he has been
Speaker 1: His work has been a reference in a couple of
Speaker 1: music videos. I think Metallica did one where they had
Speaker 1: some uh some some Bosch imagery going on, and then
Speaker 1: Buckethead did a music video that is just basically one
Speaker 1: of Bosch's paintings animated. Yeah, it's it's pretty pretty stunning.
Speaker 1: So so what's the argument here, Well, if you look
Speaker 1: at Bosch's own Temptation of St. Anthony triptych, you'll see
Speaker 1: that it features people with amputated and mummified feet. You
Speaker 1: also see a half human, half vegetable tree woman creature. Uh.
Speaker 1: You see an egg shaped structure belching smoke and flame.
Speaker 1: And there's an argument here that in the sort of
Speaker 1: the the code of the painting, that the vegetable human
Speaker 1: is actually a man drake, which is if you if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen the works of Guermo del Toro, you
Speaker 1: know the man drake or a ry Potter, Right, It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of human looking. The root and the herb
Speaker 1: was used to alleviate the pains of Saint Anthony's fire
Speaker 1: by the hospitalers. So and then on top of that,
Speaker 1: the egg shaped structure was possibly an apothecaries retort the
Speaker 1: distillery used to reduce medical herbs. So do you actually
Speaker 1: think Bosh was suffering from the like the hallucinatory visions
Speaker 1: of ergan poisoning? Um? I can to think not. I mean,
Speaker 1: some some people make a you know, rather impassioned argument
Speaker 1: for that, or even I've seen some arguments that he
Speaker 1: maybe used some sort of ergic derived potion as part
Speaker 1: of some sort of a cult he was in. Maybe
Speaker 1: he was aligned with the Cathars. Uh. Yeah, that's almost
Speaker 1: like what would be the Renaissance equivalent of steampunk. I
Speaker 1: don't know alchemy alchemy, I guess, yeah, I mean certainly
Speaker 1: there are a lot of you know, arguments of involving
Speaker 1: Bosch's involvement with with alchemy. But but yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's the kind of gets back to the whole Dancing
Speaker 1: Mania Salem Witchcraft thing, right, like the to to point
Speaker 1: it to Ergotism is the single smoking gun for this uh,
Speaker 1: for this artist and his his imagination. It's it's too easy,
Speaker 1: and it's it's kind of limiting, you know. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: with a lot of these hypotheses, I think very often
Speaker 1: you have to say, well, that's interesting, but I mean
Speaker 1: we we just don't really know, yeah, and we ultimately
Speaker 1: know very little about the Hieronymous Bosh's life. It's just
Speaker 1: he's ultimately kind of a blank canvas, and you can
Speaker 1: in his room enough on that point canvas to put
Speaker 1: in anything you want to be a uh, you know,
Speaker 1: involvement in some sort of a strange uh um, you know,
Speaker 1: psychedelic cult or you know, some some ergot poisoning in
Speaker 1: his time, which is certainly possible given where he lived
Speaker 1: and when he lived. But it's also just as possible
Speaker 1: that he was just a really imaginative, creative, highly skilled
Speaker 1: artist who was also who was working with with with
Speaker 1: many established symbols and motifs but also embellishing them, uh,
Speaker 1: in just a purely creative way. It's also entirely possible
Speaker 1: that he did suffer from some sort of hallucination or another.
Speaker 1: But there are so many reasons that you could experience
Speaker 1: an hallucination. There's so many ways that you could enter
Speaker 1: this altered mind, uh mind space that don't involve the
Speaker 1: consumption of ERG or any psychedelic sustenance. Sure, and then
Speaker 1: of course there's just the hypothesis that, like Gruenwald, this
Speaker 1: was his environment. He was living in a world of
Speaker 1: of mummified limbs falling off of human you know, like
Speaker 1: still living people, and people suffering from madness thinking that
Speaker 1: spiders were all over their skin, right, I mean you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, as we see in with the procession of
Speaker 1: the cripples. In other words, I mean, he was very
Speaker 1: interested in the common man and what the common man
Speaker 1: dealt with and suffered with in life, and uh, and
Speaker 1: so that's shading his depiction of these very religious motifs.
Speaker 1: But again, we'll never know for sure, because Bosh doesn't
Speaker 1: say anything about it. The only way he speaks with
Speaker 1: us is through these these these brilliant works of art
Speaker 1: that are still just as powerful today as they were
Speaker 1: back when he was alive. Isn't it strange that such
Speaker 1: a tiny little organism UH that doesn't even directly attack humans,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's target is the rye, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is collaterally exactly where collateral damage. This little purple witch
Speaker 1: finger extending out of a out of a plant has
Speaker 1: caused so much trouble for humanity and for their you know,
Speaker 1: all the other animals. Indeed, all right, so there you
Speaker 1: have it. Organism in a nutshell. Um, look at the
Speaker 1: way it is UH has influenced our history, our our biology,
Speaker 1: our art and religion. Um. Really fascinating stuff. If you
Speaker 1: would like to see some of these images that we've
Speaker 1: been discussing here, check out the landing page for this
Speaker 1: episode at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's
Speaker 1: also the way you will find all the other episodes
Speaker 1: we've done. Will find videos, you'll find blog posts. You'll
Speaker 1: find links out to our social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Tumbler, and follow us at those accounts. By all means,
Speaker 1: if you use those social media systems, and if you
Speaker 1: have any interesting thoughts about urgotism or any other strange
Speaker 1: psychedelic substances that have somehow penetrated our diet throughout the
Speaker 1: years and throughout the centuries, and want to talk to
Speaker 1: us about it, send us an email at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at how staff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it how staff
Speaker 1: works dot com.