The Psychedelic Nightmare of Ergotism

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Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stuff works.com.

Hey.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

My name is Robert Lamb.

And I'm Joe McCormick.

Joe, listeners, imagine yourself a time traveling wanderer in the 16th century.

It's a time of horror and wonder, of of budding possibilities for a more informed age as well, as pools of lingering shadow and superstition.

You come to the monastery of Saint Anthony in Eisenheim near Colmar in what is now modern day France.

Now what do you expect to find at such a monastery?

How has your education and entertainment prepared you for such a place?

Pious robed brothers praying before elaborate altars, studious monks secluded in their libraries and scriptoriums.

But here you encounter the stench of illness and corruption.

You hear the cries of the pained and the mad.

You find the hospital brothers of Saint Anthony as they tirelessly treat victims of plague skin disease and especially that condition known as Saint Anthony's fire or ergot poisoning.

As you make your way through the monastery, you glimpse blackened limbs.

You hear psychotic cries, voices describing hallucinations straight from some surrealistic vision of hell.

And as you enter the sanctuary yourself, you glimpse an altar unlike anything you've imagined before.

Behold the Eisenheim altarpiece of Matthias Grunewald.

In its current configuration, the great folding work of art presents a familiar motif, Jesus Christ crucified at Golgotha.

But it's easily the most grotesque image of Christ you've ever seen.

You'd be tempted to think it blasphemous even for Christ's skin is dark, at times greenish, gangrenous, covered in sores in addition to the familiar wounds of execution.

Because this work of art, this interpretation of absolute human death and suffering emerges from the ravages of ergotism.

Ergotism.

Ergotism.

So that's gonna be the subject today.

But I've seen this work

of art you're talking about.

Yes.

But you've

called attention to it before.

Grunewald's Yes.

You've called attention to it before, Grunewald's diseased Christ.

And it looks like something that is, as you pointed out, intended to be blasphemous.

It looks like something from a metal album insert, like, you know, you're flipping through the pages of the CD insert, and it's got a pentagram, and it's got like a, you know, crucified goat with blood everywhere.

And then it's got this disease to Jesus with with, you know, sores and this greenish body.

It doesn't look like your traditional image of the of pious Christ.

Right.

Yeah.

It's and it's it's fascinating.

And that it is when you we get into it, you'll see that it is a very pious image.

It was not created out of any sense of, you know, blasphemous outrage, but it it it does look like zombie Jesus.

Yeah.

So what is ergot?

And what in the world would something called ergot have to do with a diseased Christ from a metal album insert?

So imagine you're walking through a grain field with tall stalks of rye all around you.

And, so we're not all that close to the agriculture that sustains our lives anymore.

Rye might actually need some explanation.

It is a cultivated grass crop.

So it's like wheat or barley, and we can use rye to make breads, beer, whiskey.

The scientific name of this plant is, sikaelcerealae, I think.

That's sakaleciriale and then like cereal with an e at the end.

So you're a body, you're meeting a body, coming through the rye.

And you notice that on some of the stalks of the grass of the rye, where the little rye grains would normally be poking out of the stalk, there are instead these long dark purple to black fingers reaching into the air, like twisted deformed little mockeries of the seeds that should be in this plant.

What are these things?

Well, each of these little fingers is an ergot or another name for them in science would be the sclerotium.

It's a piece of fungal tissue.

So it's mushroom in nature fungus.

And it grows when the grain is infected with the fungus claviceps purpurea.

And that's a parasite that infects the ovaries, the female sex organs of the plant in grasses.

And the host is most often ripe, but other grasses and grains can fall victim to ergot.

This is so common in rye that people actually thought it was a part of the grain up until the 1850s when we really began to understand the true fungal nature of the ergot.

Which is something to keep in mind as we discuss the problems that emerge from human consumption of ergot.

Exactly right.

And so we're gonna get to the human consumption in a minute because that's central to the podcast.

But first, we should actually talk about what this thing is.

What does it do to the plants?

Because nobody cares about the plants.

They're the ones that really suffer.

So the ergot itself, what is this thing?

This little black purple black finger poking up out of the rye stalk.

The ergot itself is what's known as an overwintering structure.

So it's this protective architecture that allows the fungus to survive through the freezing season and make it to the next stage in its reproductive cycle.

And claviceps produces both sexual and asexual spores to spread and infect new hosts.

When the fungal infection cycle begins, you'll often see dew forming on the ovaries sap and then asexually produced fungal spores called conidia.

And these asexual spores can infect other hosts when they're spread by physical contact, so on the bodies of insects or even by the splashes of raindrops.

I don't know if you've seen anything about how some parasites spread from plant to plant by the rain.

When the rain hits the plant, it splashes the parasite everywhere onto the plants next to it.

So that's one method of transmission.

But then as the seed head matures, some of its normally healthy grains are replaced by these ergot or sclerotia, which are designed to keep the fungal parasite alive through the cold months.

When the spring arrives, the surviving ergot sprout multiple stromata, which are these stalks with little knobs at the end.

And they look more like what you think of when you hear the word mushroom.

They're the the stromata, singular stroma, produce sexual spores as opposed to the asexual spores produced at the earlier stage called ascospores.

And once the spores are developed, they get spit out into the air to carry on the circle of life of fungus.

And so, like wind driven pollen, they get caught in the stigma of other host plants and go on to infect new grass ovaries.

So, that's the story of Claviceps purpurea.

It's not trying to get into you.

It's trying to get into the rye.

It wants to spread from plant to plant like a plague upon the earth and become the zombie virus that that is the rye apocalypse.

But that is not actually the end of the story.

Because let's say, we're back walking through this field of infected rye and instead of just walking through the field, you're walking through the field with a scythe and you're harvesting these ergot infested stalks, fungus fingers and all, and you take it home and you turn it into some delicious rye bread for you and your family to eat pastrami sandwiches on, what's gonna happen to you?

Well, some bad stuff can happen.

And in this, we get into sort of the complexities of ergotism and ergot poisoning because we have essentially 2 different forms of ergotism that can occur.

Yeah.

So in these overwintering structures, these little black fingers, they're toxic alkaloids and they can have various types of effects.

Right?

Yeah.

There are, yeah.

Essentially, there are different strains, of the of the organism that have different effects when consumed.

Mhmm.

So on one hand, you have gangrenous ergotism, which is as horrible as it sounds.

So the idea here is that ergotism is essentially a vasoconstrictor.

So it constricts the blood vessels.

So it can severely limit the blood flow to the extremities, which can result in a range of symptoms.

You can get nausea, limb pain.

And this this particular pain in the limbs is often described as having a burning sensation, which earned it the, the nickname, ignis sesor or holy fire.

Wow.

And this can also cause the skin to peel, blisters, to occur all over, and then this can essentially even lead to, to to gangrene occurring because, again, the blood vessels are constricting.

There's less blood reaching the extremities.

And these extremities can then turn black and mummified, causing the infected limbs to spontaneously break off at the joints.

But there's no pain involved in this because it's just been cut off

from the It's already

dead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just dead tissue at this point.

But it's still rotting.

It's still the the stench can still be just completely unbearable.

Yeah.

So just imagine that because you ate the regular food from your regular food supply

I

It's terrifying.

Especially when you think about it coming from consuming bread, because we so often don't think of bread as being this dangerous thing, because it's such an artificial food substance.

Right?

Right.

It's not like mayonnaise left out in the sun that you can just, you know Right.

We quickly think of as, like, that's gonna be a problem in your body.

But Right.

It's bread.

What could go wrong?

Okay.

So that's gangrenous ergotism.

But then there's also convulsive ergotism.

And this is the the nervous dysfunction variant.

And this can also result in a host of horrible things such as vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, the sensation of ants and spiders crawling all over your body.

What?

Yeah.

Painful seizures, twitchings, spasms, convulsions, blindness, deafness.

And generally, the the gastrointestinal symptoms that I mentioned, those precede a full blown central nervous system, condition.

And in its in extremes, you're also encountering hallucinations, mania, and psychosis.

Wow.

Can you get both strains at the same time?

Oh, yes.

That's where it gets even worse.

Is it?

Because on one hand, you have the mummified stinking flesh rotting variant.

Then you have the madness, spiders all over me, and I'm in just a psychotic hallucinatory state.

And indeed, they can occur concurrently so you can get a mixed form.

Though historically, we tend to see geographic areas in Europe with a greater tendency towards one form of these versus the other because, again, we're looking at slightly different strains of the fungus causing either convulsive or gangrenous ergotism.

And then there's also this.

The ergot stage of the fungus contains a storehouse of various compounds ranging from the benign to even, as we'll discuss, beneficial.

And since the proportions of the compound vary even within the species, the same person might experience different symptoms on a subsequent consumption of the same ergot strain.

Oh,

man.

So you're just kind of rolling the, like, awful Dungeon Master dice, every time you come across some ergot in your bread.

That's so scary.

And also, just combine this with the fact that it it was so common in medieval period.

And you

can just imagine the confusion and the terror that went along with all of this suffering.

Yeah.

Because you have you in areas where there's a big dependency on rye bread for food

Yeah.

And and, so you're gonna have also, you have areas where, like, one baker may be providing the entire town's bread.

So you have cases where entire medieval towns suffered from this.

I mean, it was it was an epidemic.

On top of that, it tended to target the the poorer portions of the population because the dirtier your your grain, the less choice you have in your your grain source and in your bread, the more likely you are to, in to encounter ergotism.

You know, that made me wonder actually how long ergotism has been a problem for grass eating animals on earth because one of the things that is certainly true is it's not just humans that get it.

I mean, people don't just get it from rye cereals and rye bread and stuff.

Animals get it.

Oh, yeah.

Livestock.

Yeah.

Livestock can suffer from gangrenous, ergotism, just from eating infected grasses and grains.

And apparently, this might go back a really long time.

I was wondering just how long has old claviceps been attacking hungry grass eaters with its overwintering structures.

Well, we know the existence of ergot is tied to the existence of its host, which is grass.

And until recently, we actually didn't know exactly how old grass was.

I thought that was kind of weird, but that was true.

We didn't know exactly how far back this plant went.

According to a 2015 report in the journal paleodiversity, a chunk of amber from Myanmar contains a preserved sample of fungus structure very similar to ergot atop a grass spikelet, that's a structure at the top of the grass, where the ergot would be manifest.

And this positions ergot fungus around a 100000000 years old.

So, well within the Cretaceous period, which means dinosaurs.

So we don't know exactly if dinosaurs ate this stuff and we don't know exactly what effect this stuff would have had on dinosaurs who ate it if they did eat it.

But if they reacted anything like the mammals who eat it, that leads us to imagine a bizarre landscape of Cretaceous Herbivores like Triceratops at £20,000 having nightmarish hallucinations and doing the Saint Vitus dance.

Wow.

I mean, I shouldn't laugh.

Poor poor creature.

But but at the same time, yeah, to imagine this, this psychotic substance that we, we end up focusing a lot on how it affects the human mind and our perception of self and even our religion, but to imagine a dinosaur encountering it, a dinosaur essentially engaging in a dangerous psychedelic substance.

It's pretty mind blowing.

Mind blowing would be a word for it.

Now, of course, the human relationship with Ergotism also seems to go back very far.

Oh, yeah.

It gets it gets interesting because, you know, you also deal with situations where, alright, if it's every it's only gonna show up in places where you actually have civilizations consuming a lot of rye.

Yeah.

There are Syrian tablets from around 600 BCE that speak of a, quote, noxious pustule in the ear of grain.

There, we also see South Asian Zoroastrian texts that write of, quote, grasses that cause pregnant women to drop the womb and die in childbirth.

And those are from around 400 BCE to 300 BCE.

But then, you know, we turn to the Greeks and Romans who we often depend on for, you know, accounts of the of happenings in the ancient world, And they were not big on rye bread, so they make no mention of it, which, of course, really cuts into our ability to track it through the ancient world.

Yeah.

And yet, the Greeks do and this is kind of arguable, but, the Greeks do give us the myth of the temple of Eleusis devoted to the cult of Demeter and Persephone, a literal descent into hell, if you remember that story with Persephone abducted by Hades, etcetera.

Wait.

Hold on.

The temple is a literal descent into hell?

No.

No.

No.

The myth is a literal descent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But, but they're concerned with this story.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

The myth of the temple.

Right.

Yeah.

So not to to rehash the whole story, but, of course, it involves, essentially springtime and summer being kidnapped by Hades and the the inevitable cycles of seasons, that, of course, ties into agriculture.

And this is an old agrarian cult.

And in order to enter this temple, you had to fast, you had to rest, you had to make sacrifices, and you also drank something called, which is a strange purple potion.

And again, think of claviceps purpurea, resulting in tears, hallucinations, tremors, and sweats.

And so some suggest that this might have been derived from claviceps purpurea.

And and who better than an ancient agrarian cult to utilize the reality warping powers of a crop fungus.

Right?

Yeah.

This points out one thing that's especially scary.

I think I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was earlier in this episode, but the way in which agriculture is so deeply tied to civilization.

Like in some ways, agriculture is sort of the definition of civilization.

When does civilization arise?

It's when we settle down and grow crops.

And what are our main crops, their grains?

Then also there is the fact that much like you're pointing out here, many of the world's religions and especially many ancient religions have deeply agricultural themes that are based on grains.

There are death and rebirth cycles of the gods and of the ancient heroes that are based on the cycles of seasons, the growth of crops, and the harvest.

Yeah.

Indeed.

I mean, you see that transition from the old gods of the hunt, the chaotic gods of the hunt.

I don't know what my my next meal is gonna reach me.

It depends entirely on what kind of animal I can kill to this more dependable cyclical nature in the various agrarian gods that go with it.

Jonathan H.

Yeah.

So it's obvious that over time, the notion of agriculture has been deeply ingrained in us, like pun not intended, deeply sort of injected into our minds and into our cultures so that it even shows up in our mythological and magical symbols.

So the idea that our grain can be corrupted in a way that that makes us see hell, you know, and feel burning in our bodies is so is so perverse and unpleasant and disruptive of what society should be, which is safety and stability.

Yeah.

Of course, ignoring the the fact that agriculture itself is kind of a perversion of a natural process for our benefit.

Yeah.

That's a

good point.

So anyway, it's not until the Christian era that ergotism is actually described in surviving accounts again.

And this is around the time when rye is introduced into Western Europe.

So our very early outbreaks of ergotism, we see them documented in the Rhine Valley in the year 857.

Wow.

And again, it disproportionately affects the poor who had less choice about, you know, their grain sources and their how dirty their grain is.

And ergot was most common when a harsh winter followed a cool wet spring because many would exhaust their food supplies and they'd be forced to eat the infected grain.

Okay.

So they knew something might not be great about the grain that had lots of ergot in it.

Yeah.

Just the the dirtier grain.

Yeah.

There was they weren't able to, like, completely put everything together, but there were there was some ideas about it.

And then from around 900 CE, when records evidently became more common in what is now France and Germany to around 1300 CE.

You see severe epidemics of ergotism affecting large areas every 5 to 10 years.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

And of course, it becomes such an issue that in 10/93, you see the the founding of a religious order, the order of hospitalers of Saint Anthony, founded in southern France to help those afflicted.

Saint Anthony is, of course, the patron saint of skin diseases and the the malady itself was named Saint Anthony's Fire.

Anthony, of course, is said to have faced supernatural temptations, kind of hallucinatory encounter.

So, this is, of course, a favorite subject in Western art from the medieval period onward, which makes him even more suitable for this.

So the monks built over 370 hospitals and those who came often found some relief from ergotism.

Though it it's kind of you can kinda get into the situation how much of it is they're treating of the skin ailments.

And they they they also treated other skin ailments beside or besides ergotism.

Yeah.

But then also, while you're under their care,

you're probably not continuing to consume that rye bread Oh.

While you're under the

care of the hospital, you're probably Move the city, go back home and you're infected home.

Exactly.

And you're back restarted.

Yet another reason, it seems like we're all rather fortunate we don't live in medieval Europe.

Yes.

And of course, you have other things that are occurring probably due to ergotism as well.

As Oliver Sacks points out in his excellent book, Hallucinations, Some historians attribute ergot poisoning as a possible factor much later with the Salem witch hysteria in the new world, but it may also explain the dancing plagues reported between the 14th 17th century as well.

So individuals suddenly behaving erratically en masse, you get into arguments, is this mass hysteria?

Is this more of a, you know, a a social contagion?

Or is it indeed tied to the consumption of ergot and and and suffering from convulsive ergotism?

Yeah.

And, obviously, we don't have the answer there.

I think a lot of people are skeptical of the idea that Ergot caused the dancing manias.

If you're not familiar, you should look these up.

They're crazy.

The idea is that, you know, in random places throughout Europe in the medieval period, you'd have suddenly lots of people would just start dancing.

And it it seemed to they seemed possessed in some way, like, they couldn't stop.

Yeah.

And people were afraid.

They didn't know what was going on.

And now, I mean, I don't really see phenomena like that occurring today.

So I don't even really know what I could compare it to.

Well, there you do see accounts of mass hysteria, and and we actually have an episode on this I'll have to link to on the the landing page for this episode.

But you do see accounts where you'll say have a group of, schoolchildren at a at a at a, you know, academy somewhere and they they all believe they've come down with an illness when there's actually no illness, that sort of thing.

Also, in the past, you know, few centuries, accounts of everyone in a particular area claiming to see some sort of supernatural event?

Did they all really see it or is it just kind of this group, you know, this collective hysteria that's taking over them?

Jonathan Yeah.

So the general hypothesis is that it might have had something to do with some of these dancing manias.

We don't know.

But the specific one about the Salem witch trials is interesting.

How exactly does the does the ergot theory come in here?

Yeah.

Some historians feel that it's entirely possible that Elizabeth Paris, the first girl to fall ill, actually suffered from some sort of vergot poisoning.

And then the rest of the girls, took the opportunity to stave off their boredom and and engage in this kind of persecution.

It it kind of drives home, like, the problem of pointing out any kind of strange occurrence in the past and saying, oh, well, this was this poisoning or this was a psychedelic or or what have you.

Because ultimately, the social dynamics of these situations are fairly complex and there can be multiple energies feeding into them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Psychohistory is a very difficult thing to try to do.

Didn't Josh Clark write something about this for the website?

He did.

He wrote, were the American colonists drugged during the Salem witch trials?

And in it, he, he points out that, you know, one of the the criticisms with some of these theories, you know, raises the question, why only the girls?

Why not the others?

Why only 1692?

Why not previous years and later years?

So, yeah, when you start trying to say, you know, say, ergotism is the is the the the the smoking gun here, there are just so many additional questions that arise.

Yeah.

Like bread.

Like bread.

Just

to make sure we get another vacay analogy in there.

Well, terrible puns.

But I mean, whether or not it had any role to play in dancing manias or the Salem witch trials, it certainly was a real phenomenon that was psychedelic and horrifying.

Yeah.

Shout out to Astepro for sponsoring this episode and providing us with free samples.

Rob, as the, the local host with allergies here, they sent you some of their nasal spray to treat your allergies.

What was your experience like?

Yeah.

That's right.