Yay, I figured you'd be the one to get it. Its funny that the ads linked to it are about nail fungus. I bet life would be different if I got an infection from a fungus that produced such crazy alkaloids. Most people would probably think I was a junkie, when I'm really just unfortunate. Poor misunderstood me.
Hey Rachel, Ergot is a very interesting plant pathogen. It infects the flowers of grasses and replaces the seeds with these hard overwintering structures. These have a bunch of toxic alkaloids, so when people eat flour made from ergot infested grain, they get a disease called St. Anthony's fire or ergotism. from what I have read, the disease is horribly painful and causes blood vessels to constrict to the point where blood can't flow to youre extremities and tissues in the limbs start to die. It also makes people act crazy, so some people believe it was connected to the Salem witch trials and the witches were actually sick with ergotism. There is speculation of a connection to many other historical events as well. One of the alkaloids is lysergic acid, a precursor to LSD and ergot is where LSD was first derived from. It has mainly been a problem in rye and most the people who have gotten sick were poor people who ate ryebread. In the picture here it is growing on a wild brome grass in the coast range just west of where I live.
Cheers
Nate
Oh... fascinating. Thank you for the information. I do wonder about causes for weird events. I think it'd probably explain mass hysteria reasonably well. I still wonder if episodes of sleep paralysis may have been a factor in witch trials.
It's very hard to guess about historical events, but it's still interesting to think about.
Discussion (8)
I bet you have all heard of it.
Could it be ergot?
Yay, I figured you'd be the one to get it. Its funny that the ads linked to it are about nail fungus. I bet life would be different if I got an infection from a fungus that produced such crazy alkaloids. Most people would probably think I was a junkie, when I'm really just unfortunate. Poor misunderstood me.
Actually... I haven't heard of ergot. So, details? I mean, I could google, but I'm lazy. I don't know much about fungus.
Hey Rachel, Ergot is a very interesting plant pathogen. It infects the flowers of grasses and replaces the seeds with these hard overwintering structures. These have a bunch of toxic alkaloids, so when people eat flour made from ergot infested grain, they get a disease called St. Anthony's fire or ergotism. from what I have read, the disease is horribly painful and causes blood vessels to constrict to the point where blood can't flow to youre extremities and tissues in the limbs start to die. It also makes people act crazy, so some people believe it was connected to the Salem witch trials and the witches were actually sick with ergotism. There is speculation of a connection to many other historical events as well. One of the alkaloids is lysergic acid, a precursor to LSD and ergot is where LSD was first derived from. It has mainly been a problem in rye and most the people who have gotten sick were poor people who ate ryebread. In the picture here it is growing on a wild brome grass in the coast range just west of where I live.
Cheers
Nate
Oh... fascinating. Thank you for the information. I do wonder about causes for weird events. I think it'd probably explain mass hysteria reasonably well. I still wonder if episodes of sleep paralysis may have been a factor in witch trials.
It's very hard to guess about historical events, but it's still interesting to think about.
I'm always especially interested when some organism naive to whole situation is involved. But there are other theories for these events as well.
After reading your comments, NOW i know what it's called!