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Ergot Poisoning In 1692: The Salem Witch Trials

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Elexus Smith, Melody Salinas-Zacarias, Lorenzo Valdez Aguilar Mrs.Gann English III Honors April 5, 2023 Ergot Poisoning In 1692, the Salem Witch Trials happened, with eight girls accusing others of witchcraft. The girls acted strange, moving in weird positions, saying they saw things that no one else could, and saying they felt things in their skin. Many theories suggest what could have happened. Some say that they acted or that it was actual witchcraft, but they don’t always seem convincing. There is a fungus called Ergot that could be to blame for this hysteria; both the symptoms that Ergot causes and the girl's experiences are similar. The fungus Ergot mainly grows on and is most likely to grow on opened-pollinated crops because “it allows easy access of the fungus into the flowering head” like rye (“Ergot of Cereals and Grasses | Disease”). If the infected grain is eaten, the most common symptoms are convulsive fits, hallucinations, vomiting, and a prickling sensation under the skin. This was also what the girls did: "They vomited, screamed incomprehensibly, claimed to see things that weren’t …show more content…

The first ones to be affected by witchcraft were Betty, who was 9, and Abigail, who was 11: both showed symptoms of ergot poisoning, and both fit in the age group (Pruitt). It is the same for the other girls; they all have symptoms related to ergot poisoning, and they are all in the same age group. Their guardian Parris was the minister of the town and they took the word of God seriously(Weller 1:05) so they had no reason to fake it because that would go against God, making them sin which was a really bad thing to them. Why would they do something that they knew would go against their faith by choice making it worse, unless it was

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