July 7, 2015 • 43 mins
Imagine an entire 15th-century town overcome by a collective waking nightmare. The afflicted walk the streets with blackened limbs and seeping sores, all while psychotic hallucinations assault their fragile hold on sanity. Join Robert and Joe as they explore the world of Ergotism and discuss how a toxic fungus terrorized and inspired generations of Medieval Europeans.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot 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 wonderer in the sixteenth Citree.
(00:23):
It's a time of horror and wonder, of budding possibilities
for a more informed age, as well uh as pools
of lingering shadow and superstition. You come to the Monastery
of Saint Anthony in Eisenheim, near Colmar and what is
now modern day France. Now what do you expect to find?
It's such a monastery. How is your education and entertainment
(00:45):
prepared you for such a place? Pious robed brothers praying
before elaborate altars, studious monks secluded in their libraries and
scriptoriums ah. But here you encounter the stinch of illness
and corruption. You hear the cries of the pain than
the mad. You find the hospital brothers of Saint Anthony
as they tirelessly treat victims of plague, skin disease, and
(01:08):
especially that condition known as Saint Anthony's fire or urgic poisoning.
As you make your way through the monastery, you glimpse
of blackened limbs, you hear psychotic cries, voices describing hallucination
straight from some surrealistic vision of hell, and as you
enter the sanctuary yourself, you glimpse and altar unlike anything
you've imagined before. Behold the Eisenheim altarpiece of Matthias Grunwald
(01:34):
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
(01:54):
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, so that's going
to be the subject today. But I've seen this work
of art you're talking about, You've called attention to it
before Gruenwald's Diseased Christ, and it looks like something that is,
(02:20):
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
diseased Jesus with with you know, sores and this greenish body.
(02:43):
It doesn't look like your traditional image of the of
pious Christ, right, Yeah, it's and it's it's fascinating and
it it is. When 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 does look like zombie Jesus. Yeah, So what
(03:03):
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.
(03:25):
It is a cultivated grass crops, so it's like wheat
or barley, and we can use rye to make bread's beer, whiskey.
The scientific name of this plant is secale cereal l A.
I think secale and then like cereal with any at
the end. So you're a body meeting a body coming
through the rye, and you notice that on some of
(03:47):
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 uh mockery's
of the seeds that should be in this plant. One
(04:09):
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 perpurea, and that's
a parasite that infects the ovaries, the female sex organs
(04:33):
of the plant. In grasses and the host is most
soften rye, 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 eighteen fifties when we really began to understand
the true fungal nature of the ergot, which is something
(04:54):
to keep in mind as we discussed the problems that
are mgered from human consumption of ergan. 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
due to the plants because nobody, nobody cares about the plants.
They're the ones that really suffer. So the urga itself,
what is this thing's little black, purple black finger poking
(05:17):
up out of the rye stalk. The urg it itself
is what's known as an overwintering structure. It 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. Uh and clavisups produces both sexual
and asexual spores to spread and infect new hosts. When
(05:40):
the fungal infection cycle begins, you'll often see do forming
on the ovaries of the host plants. You know where
where the seed and grain structure is, and this sticky
residue is a mixture of the plant's own sap and
then a sexually produced fungal spores called canidia. And these
a sexual spores can in effect other hosts when they're
(06:01):
spread by physical contact, so on the bodies of insects,
or even by the splashes of rain drops. I don't
know if you've seen anything about how some parasites spread
from plant to plant by the rain. And 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 it's
(06:23):
normally healthy grains are replaced by these ergo it's 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. There the
(06:45):
stromata singular stroma produced sexual spores as opposed to the
a sexual spores produced at the earlier stage called asco spores,
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
(07:07):
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
(07:28):
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 ergan 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 going to happen to you? Well,
(07:54):
some bad stuff can happen um And in this we
get into sort of the complexities of of ergotism and
ergot poisoning, because we have essentially two different forms of
ergotism that can occur. Yeah, so in these overwintering structures. Uh,
these little black fingers, they're toxic alkaloids and they can
(08:14):
have various types of effects. Right, Yeah, there are essentially
there are different strains of the of the organism that
have different effects when consumed. 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
vase of constrictor, so it constricts the blood vessels, so
(08:35):
it can severely limit the blood flow to the extremities,
which can result in a range of symptoms. Um, you
can get nausea, limb pain and this, Uh, this particular
pain in the limbs is often described as having a
burning sensation, which earned it the nickname ignis say holy
fire and this and it can also cause the skin
(08:57):
to appeal. Blisters to you occur all over and then
this can essentially even lead to to to gang green
occurring because again the blood vessels are constricted, it'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
(09:19):
this because it's just been cut off, so it's already dead. Yeah,
it's just dead tissue at this point, but it's still rotting.
It's still that the stinch can still be just completely unbearable. Yeah,
so just imagine that, because you ate the regular food
from your regular food supply coming in maybe through your
town bakery or something like that, you end up with
(09:42):
mummified feet or mummified hands and you're still alive, but
you've got blackened limbs that burn it first, then turn
black like a mummy and fall off. Yeah. It's what
kind of surreal life is this? It's terrifying, especially when
you think about it coming from consuming because we so
often don't think of bread as being this dangerous thing
(10:02):
because it's such an artificial food substance, right, right, it's
not like maynnai is left out in the sun that
you can just you know, we quickly think of as
like that's going to be a problem in your body, Right,
it's bread, what could go wrong? Okay, So that's gangernous sarchetism.
But then there's also convulsive evergotism, and this is the
nervous dysfunction variant UH, and this can also result in
(10:23):
a host of horrible things such as vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy,
the sensation of ants and spiders crawling all over your body,
what painful seizures, twitching, spasms, convulsions, blindness, deafness, um and
generally that the gastro intestinal symptoms that I mentioned. Those
(10:43):
proceed a full blown central nervous system condition, and in
its in extremes, you're also encountering hallucinations, mania and psychosis.
Can you get both strains at the same time? Oh? Yes,
that's where it gets even because I'm one, hay. Do
you have the mummified stinking flesh rotting variant, then you
(11:03):
have the madness, spiders all over me, and I'm in
just a psychotic collusiontory state. And indeed, um they can
occur concurrently, so you can get a mixed form. Though
historically we tend to see geographic areas in Europe with
greater tendency towards one form of the these versus the other,
because again we're looking at slightly different strains of the
(11:23):
fungus causing either a convulsive organginous organism. And then there's
Also this the ergic stage of the fungus contains a
storehouse of various compounds, ranging from the benign to even
as well discussed beneficial uh. 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
(11:46):
same ergic strain. So you're just kind of rolling the
like awful dungeon master dice every time you come across
some erg it in your bread. That's so scary. And
also just combine this with the fact that it was
so common in the medieval period, and you can just
imagine the confusion and the terror that went along with
(12:09):
all of this suffering. Yeah, because you have in areas
where there is a big dependency on rye bread for food,
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 um. I mean, it was it was an epidemic. Um.
(12:31):
On top of that, it tended to target the poorer
um portions of the population because the dirty your grain,
the less choice you have in your your grain source
and your bread. Uh, the more likely you are to
to encounter urgotism. Well, you know, that made me wonder,
actually how long ergotism has been a problem for grass
(12:53):
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. Livestock can
suffer from gangrenous ergitism just from eating infected grasses and grains.
And apparently this might go back a really long time.
(13:16):
I was wondering just how long his old clavicep has
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.
(13:36):
We didn't know exactly how far back this plant went.
According to a report in the journal Paleo Diversity, a
chunk of amber from Mayan Mark contains a preserved sample
of fungus structure very similar to ergat atop a grass spikelet.
That's a structure at the top of the grass. You
know that we uh where the argot would be manifest
(14:00):
and this positions urget fungus around a hundred million years old,
so well within the Cretaceous period, which means dinosaurs. Okay,
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
(14:21):
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 twenty thou pounds
having nightmarish hallucinations and doing the st Vitus dance. Wow,
I mean, I shouldn't laugh, poor poor creature. But but
(14:43):
at the same time, you have to imagine this uh,
this psychotic substance that we uh. We end up focusing
a lot on how it affects the human mind and
perception of self and even our religion. But to imagine
a dinosaur, or encountering at a dinosaur essentially uh engaging
in a dangerous um psychedelic substance, It's ah, it's pretty
(15:03):
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 the situations where,
all right, if it is every it's only going to
show up in places where you actually have civilizations consuming
a lot of rye Um. There are Assyrian tablets from
(15:27):
around the six hundred BC that speak of a quote
noxious pustule in the ear of grain. There um. We
also see South Asian zoroastron texts that right of quote
grasses that cause pregnant women to drop the womb and
die in childbirth, and those are from around four hundred
(15:47):
BC to three hundred BC. But then, you know, we
turned to the Greeks and Romans, who we often depend
on for, you know, accounts of of happenings in the
ancient world, and they were not big on rye bread,
so they make no mention of it um, which of
course really cuts into our ability to track it through
the ancient world. And yet the Greeks do, and this
(16:09):
is kind of arguable, but the Greeks do give us
the myth of the temple of el Usus, devoted to
the cult of Demeter and Persephone a literal descent into hell.
If you remember that story with Persephone abducted by Hades, etcetera.
On the temple is a literal descent into hell. No, no, no,
(16:29):
that the myth is a little exactly yeah. Um, but
but they're they're concerned with with this story. Uh, the
myth of the Temple's right. Yeah, so not to to
rehatch the whole story, but of course it involves essentially
springtime and summer being kidnapped by Hades and the inevitable
cycles of seasons that of course ties into agriculture. And
(16:52):
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 kai kion, which is a strange purple potion. Um.
And again think of clouds proparia resulting in tears, hallucinations, tremors,
(17:12):
and sweats and so some suggest that this might have
been derived from cloud steps proparia. And uh and who
better than an ancient agrarian cult to utilize the reality
warping powers of a crop fucus? 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
(17:35):
deeply tied to civilization, Like in some ways, agriculture is
sort of the definition of civilization. When do 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
(17:58):
deeply agricultural themes that are based on grains. That you know,
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 in 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 next meal is going to reach me.
(18:18):
It depends entirely on what kind of animal I can kill,
to this more dependable, cyclical nature in the very the
grarian gods that go with it. 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 and into our cultures, so
(18:39):
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 sea hell, you know,
and feel burning in our bodies is so is so
perverse and unpleasant and disruptive of what society should be,
(18:59):
which is safty instability. Yeah, of course, during 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 urgantism
is actually described in surviving accounts. Again, uh, and this
is around the time when rise introduced into Western Europe.
(19:19):
So are very early outbreaks of urgotism. We see them
documented in the Rhine Valley in the year eight fifty seven.
And again it disproportionately affects the poor, who had less
choice about you know, their grain sources and their how
dirty their grain is. Um and urg It was most
common when a harsh winter followed a cool, wet spring,
(19:40):
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 erg it 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. Um. And then from around nine hundred
(20:01):
uh ce when records uh evidently became more common in
what is now France and Germany, to around uh hundred,
see you see severe epidemics of urgotism affecting large areas
every five to ten years. Yeah, and of course it
becomes such an issue that in ten ninety three you
see the founding of a religious order, the Order of
(20:23):
hospital Ers of Saint Anthony, founded in southern France to
help those afflicted. Uh. Saint Anthony is of course the
patron saint of skin diseases, and that the malady itself
was named Saint Anthony's Fire. Uh. Anthony of course is
said to face supernatural temptations kind of hallucinatory U encounters.
So this is of course a favorite subject in Western
(20:44):
art from the medieval period onward, which makes him even
more suitable for this so the monks built over three
hundred seventy hospitals, and those who came often found some
relief from urgotism. Uh, though it's kind of you can
kind to get into the situation. How much of it
is they're treating of the skin ailments, and they also
treated other skin ailments beside or beside organism. But then
(21:07):
also while you're under their care, you're probably not continuing
to consume that rye bread while you're under the care
of the hospitalers, so that can contribute to your recovery.
Then you go back home and you're back restarted. Yet
another reason. It seems like we're all rather fortunate we
don't live in medieval Europe. Um. And of course you
(21:29):
have other things that are occurring of probably due to
organism as well as all of our Sacks points out
in his excellent book Hallucinations. Uh. Some historians attribute organ
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 fourteenth and seventeenth
century as well. So individuals suddenly behaving erratically in mass Uh.
(21:54):
You get into arguments, is this mass hysteria. Is this
more of a you know, a social contagion, or is
it indeed tied to the consumption of ergot and 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
(22:15):
up there. They're crazy, the the ideas 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 seemed they seemed possessed in some way like that
they couldn't stop, and people were afraid they didn't know
what was going on. And now, I mean, I don't
(22:36):
really see phenomenon 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 um and
we actually have an episode on this off the link
to on the the landing page of this episode. You
do see accounts where you'll say, I have a group
of school children at at at a academy somewhere, and
(22:56):
they all believe they'd come down with an illness when
there's actually no this that sort of thing. Um uh.
Also in the past, you know a few centuries accounts
of everyone in a particular area claiming to see some
sort of supernatural event, to all really see it or
is it just kind of this this group, you know,
this collective hysteria that's taking over them. Yeah, So the
(23:18):
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 which trials is interesting.
How exactly does the does the ergot theory come in here? Yes,
some historians feel that it's entirely possible that Elizabeth Paris,
the first girl to to fall ill, actually suffered from
some sort of ergot poisoning and then the rest of
(23:39):
the girls um took the opportunity to stave off their
boredom uh 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 airly complex and
(24:01):
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 where the American Colonists drugged during
the Salem Witch Trials? And in it he he points
out that, you know, one of the criticisms with some
of these the theories, uh, you know, raises the question
(24:22):
why only the girls, why not the others? Why only
six two? Why not previous years? In later years? So
when you start trying to say, you know, say urgantism
is the is the smoking gun here? Uh, there's just
so many additional questions that arise, like bread, like bread,
just to make sure we get another vacant well, terrible puns.
(24:46):
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. Now,
we mentioned that by the eighteen fifties we had a
pretty good understanding of how archetism were the last reported outbreak,
and this is by no means conclusive. There are alternative
theories for this as well. Um. The last reported outbreak
(25:08):
occurred in nineteen fifty one in pont Standard Spreit in
southern France, in which more than two cases were reported
along with four deaths. But again that's not cut and
dry either. So we mentioned the various compounds that are
that are that are in the uh, the fungus, right,
they have these alkaloids in them that can cause terrible
(25:30):
symptoms and diseases. But they can actually be used or
maybe derivatives from them can be used for legitimate medical purposes,
can't they They can? Yeah, I mean it's it's kind
of one of the you know, underlying ideas that any
kind of particularly powerful substance produced by nature, uh, it
can be utilized efficiently if if properly managed. Yeah. One
(25:52):
of my favorite technology stories is how to use animal
venom in medicine, like using scorpion venom in medicine to
treat diseases. Yeah, I mean, we we we have numerous
cases where we can take something that is in nature, uh,
this deadly substance, then we can use it for our
own benefit in a medicine or say a spice of flavoring. Um.
You know what, what is a spicy pepper added to
(26:14):
your your taco salad? But for a fun way to
see something unusual. Yeah, exactly. So with there we get.
We have a few different compounds of note UM. There's ergonovine.
This is a compound produced by clavisups Papyria that we've
used for centuries and even today to um to speed
up labor prevent postpartum bleeding. And we see it uh
(26:37):
we and in this we see the uh. The the
vaso constrictive properties of of er get put to good use,
and this is typically administered during the third stage of labor.
And then there's ERGOTAMINEU. This is useful with migraine headaches
because it reduces extra cranial blood flow. It's also a
(26:57):
serotonin agonist which can help alleviate the headaches as well.
And on top of that, they're scientists have looked into
the possibility that it could be used treating Parkinson's disease
since ergo is a dopamine agonist, meaning that it increases
the effects of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain UH.
In Parkinson's patients, dopamine transmitting neurons die off. So ergic
(27:21):
derivatives are helpful in boosting the signal between nerve cells
and the brain. And of course researchers can continue to
explore uses for compounds produced by the claviceps fungus as well.
That's right, I mean muscle relax here is potentially a
treatment of various circulatory diseases UM, and it might even
work as a possible anti tumor drugs. So you know,
(27:42):
the work continues. Again, it's a it's powerful substance, and
scientists continue to continue to come back to it and
look at possible uses for it. Right, But of course
we would be remiss if we did not discuss at
some length the relationship between ergot and psychedelic drugs. That's right, Um,
l s D in particular. Yeah, so urge actually plays
(28:04):
a role in the scientific isolation and discovery of L
s D by the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman. Right. So yeah,
Back in the nineteen thirties, researchers at the Rockville Institute
in New York isolated lesurgic acid from an ergic compound,
and the research was the basis for Albert Hoffman's work
at Sandas a pharmaceutical company. And uh, and so the
(28:27):
the roots of LSD, the the roots of of lesergic
acid lie in the isolation of the compound within it. Yeah,
so Albert Hoffman was actually the one in in the
late nineteen thirties to derive LSD twenty five lessergic acid
uh diethyla minde. And if we believe the story, it
(28:48):
was not originally created for the purpose of causing acid trips,
now that the pharmaceutical companies had other things in mind.
But but I believe the story is that Hoffman a
sedentally dosed himself with this while working with it in
the lab and began to feel weird. He began to
feel the effects of an LSD trip, and after experiencing
(29:11):
that once, he was like, oh, that was kind of interesting,
maybe worth doing some more research, And so he synthesized
a batch to test on himself, basically right. And so
I know, you know a number of people are probably wondering,
what does that mean. I can grow ergic, I can
cultivate ergic and uh and therefore create my own LSD.
Well disclaimer, we're not recommending you do this, no, not
(29:34):
at all. And uh, even if you would you wanted to,
I think you would probably stall out on this process.
But uh, according to the vaults of Rowind, which is
a nonprofit educational organization that provides information about psychoactive plants
and chemicals, Uh, it's easier to do this than depending
on morning Glory or Hawaiian baby wood rose for the
(29:56):
surgic acid amides that you need. Now, we're not gonna
walk you through the process because it's um it's a
long process. And and by the way, it includes the
recommendation quote avoid prolonged contact with the errogant compounds as
they are poisonous and can be fatal. But suffice to
say that involves a lot of sterile and chemically specific
(30:16):
handling of clavists purpruria as a first step in a
long road to synthesizing lsd YA. So in addition to
the disclaimer, it's probably gonna be difficult, difficult, and you
my poison yourself. So maybe just you know, go watch
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas again instead. There you go. Yeah,
(30:37):
but I want to get back to that disease, Jesus, Oh, yes,
get back to the The Eisenheim altarpiece of German Renaissance
paider painter at Matthias Gruenwald lived a fourteen seventy through
and uh, as with a number of these you know
older masters. You know, we don't know a whole lot
(30:57):
about his life. Uh. Most mostly his his work is
what still speaks to us. Right. So one panel illustrates
the temptation of St. Anthony in grotesque detail, with his
demon tormentors displaying clear skin ailments that are that are
clearly inspired by the skin ailments dealt with by the hospitallers. Yeah,
what were the details so that temptation My recollection is
(31:20):
that he basically went into the into the desert, into
the wilderness to to pray as you do, and so
kind of like Christ in the in the Gospel. Yeah,
but I I don't recall them making any particular offers,
like like the whole temptation of Christ. Of course, the
devil offers the you know, for Jesus to be the
king of the world and all that. Uh, there's there's
(31:42):
more of the death and offer on the table where
I think, uh St Anthony was just plagued by demons.
Do we get to turn these breads into stone? Or
now you might want to turn these breads into stones
if they are urgan infested deeds. Um. So yeah, so St.
Anthony is very much a part of the altarpiece. But
then we see this vision of the suffering Christ, which
(32:04):
we already mentioned, who clearly displays symptoms of the individuals
that were suffering in the monastery, covered with sores, gangernous flesh.
Even his hands and feet, uh, even though they're you know,
pierced by by nails. Uh, they're twisted and convulsed as
if one was suffering from convulsive right. And so it's
(32:26):
not part of the religious tradition of any Christians that
Christ actually suffered from margate poisoning. Like, that's not in
the Bible. That's not particularly a belief. This was just
sort of an interpretive lens of Gruenwald's right. Yeah. In fact,
I mean up until the thirteenth century, the predominant style
was was to depict Christ not even really suffering at all.
(32:46):
He would just be up there with his you know,
his eyes eyes open, seemings seemingly impervious to the physical torments.
It is only after that that you start displaying Jesus
as actually suffering, as a human would up there, as
opposed to just being above it like a God Um.
So really um, Gruenwald was just taking this uh to
(33:07):
the local level, you know, because he's surrounded by individuals
that are are suffering from urgotism and other scan elements,
and so historians believe that he actually used those patients
as his subjects, capturing clinical details UH and their abnormal
postures and using that as the model for not only
(33:27):
the demons assaulting St. Anthony, but but the suffering of
Christ himself. That's actually kind of a moving way of
thinking about how these people were grappling with their religion.
So if their idea is that, you know, what is
the significance of Christ, that it's you know, the powerful
God coming down to earth to suffer with humanity, it
(33:49):
would make sense that they would they would impart to
their vision of the suffering Servant, the suffering God, the
same things they were suffering from. It's sort of like
a bonding relation and ship they can form with the
God that they worship. Yeah, I mean, because ultimately you're
laying there on the floor, you're suffering from urgetism, You're
being attended to by these hospitallers. What kind of suffering
(34:11):
Christ do you want to look up at? You? Want
to see the serene like, oh, I hardly noticed I
have nails in me. You want to see the Oh
I'm I'm I'm crucified, but I'm you know, really buff
and otherwise healthy. Or do you want to see a
Christ that is suffering as you suffer? He knows what
it's like to have the limbs blacken and and to
feel the igny sassare. Yeah, yeah, I mean I agree.
(34:32):
I ultimately find it, you know, really really poignant. It
also makes me wonder how come we don't see like
a sort of modern first world problems version of Christ
on the Cross says most of us can't relate to severe, um,
you know, fleshly torment. Perhaps there's like a vision of
Christ that could be created where he just doesn't have
(34:52):
enough bars on his cell phone or is his phone
running out of batteries, you know, and because that kind
of suffering the modern millennial can you can relate to,
Let's not paint that picture. Uh speaking of painting pictures though, Um,
there are various other artistic interpretations of urgotism. Uh, there's
one that came up that I was really taken with.
(35:14):
Then it's just a minor when it's a woodcut, uh
titled St Anthony's Fire Ergotism by Johannes Vichland and this
is from around four nine, probably thirties, somewhere in there.
And we see a man with a flaming ganger in
his hand, appealing to St. Anthony. So it looks kind
of like like it reminds me the hand of Glory,
(35:35):
you know. Oh I haven't seen this. Yeah, yeah, here
it is. Here's the copy of it. Oh, that is amazing.
So you have the saint is very tall, and then
there's like a child sort of at knee level reaching
up with the crippled limbs, but a flaming hand on
fire beseeching the saint. And then uh, then there's also
(35:57):
of course U Hieronymous Bosh, who is an even more
towering figure in the history of Western art. Yes, so
the idea here is a little bit different, not so
much that the artist was inspired by a world of
people suffering from argotism, but perhaps that the artist might
have been suffering from argotism himself. Indeed, though, I mean
there are there are some works by Bosch, such as
(36:19):
the Procession of the Cripples, which features a number of
afflicted bodies uh, and at least three of them uh
seemed to be suffering from organtism. So he did a
little bit at least of observing argotism in the world
around him. Sure, I didn't mean to rule that out, no, no, no,
um And just to put Bosch in his place historically
fourteen fifty to fifteen sixteen, early, highly highly influential, a
(36:41):
Netherlandish painter known for his surrealistic, nightmarish and cryptic imagery. Um.
And this was very much a time when argotism was
epidemic uh in the Netherlands. Yeah, if you haven't seen
Bosch's paintings, actually you probably have seen them. Here's here's
the clue that you're looking at a Bosch painting. Are
there lots of little people in it? And is it crazy? Yeah?
(37:04):
Are there like crazy bird demons, chamber pots on their head?
Like just those just surrealistic visions of medieval hell coupled
with the detailed depictions of peasants and stunning realistic landscapes.
Like that's pretty much Bosch in a nutshell. And you
would probably see his work uh on like like one
out of five college dorm room walls. Not to I
(37:28):
mean not not just to say his work isn't brilliant,
because it is. I mean, I still I still can get.
You can just lose myself staring into a Bosch painting
because there it's also it's just cryptic. There's so many
symbols at play, many of which would make more sense
to a contemporary viewer, particularly in the clergy or you know,
a lay patron. There may be a little more lost
on us today, but there's a lot going on. Uh
(37:51):
and in our mind just has to grapple with it.
When we were one of his paintings, Yeah, they're they're
dark and highly imaginative. They make a rob zombie music
video look dull by comparison. In fact, he has been
His work has been a reference in a couple of
music videos. I think Metallica did one where they had
some uh some some Bosch imagery going on, and then
(38:14):
Buckethead did a music video that is just basically one
of Bosch's paintings animated. Yeah, it's it's pretty pretty stunning.
So so what's the argument here, Well, if you look
at Bosch's own Temptation of St. Anthony triptych, you'll see
that it features people with amputated and mummified feet. You
(38:36):
also see a half human, half vegetable tree woman creature. Uh.
You see an egg shaped structure belching smoke and flame.
And there's an argument here that in the sort of
the the code of the painting, that the vegetable human
is actually a man drake, which is if you if
you've ever seen the works of Guermo del Toro, you
(38:58):
know the man drake or a ry Potter, Right, It's
it's kind of human looking. The root and the herb
was used to alleviate the pains of Saint Anthony's fire
by the hospitalers. So and then on top of that,
the egg shaped structure was possibly an apothecaries retort the
distillery used to reduce medical herbs. So do you actually
(39:21):
think Bosh was suffering from the like the hallucinatory visions
of ergan poisoning? Um? I can to think not. I mean,
some some people make a you know, rather impassioned argument
for that, or even I've seen some arguments that he
maybe used some sort of ergic derived potion as part
of some sort of a cult he was in. Maybe
(39:43):
he was aligned with the Cathars. Uh. Yeah, that's almost
like what would be the Renaissance equivalent of steampunk. I
don't know alchemy alchemy, I guess, yeah, I mean certainly
there are a lot of you know, arguments of involving
Bosch's involvement with with alchemy. But but yeah, I think
it's the kind of gets back to the whole Dancing
(40:05):
Mania Salem Witchcraft thing, right, like the to to point
it to Ergotism is the single smoking gun for this uh,
for this artist and his his imagination. It's it's too easy,
and it's it's kind of limiting, you know. Yeah, with
with a lot of these hypotheses, I think very often
you have to say, well, that's interesting, but I mean
we we just don't really know, yeah, and we ultimately
(40:27):
know very little about the Hieronymous Bosh's life. It's just
he's ultimately kind of a blank canvas, and you can
in his room enough on that point canvas to put
in anything you want to be a uh, you know,
involvement in some sort of a strange uh um, you know,
psychedelic cult or you know, some some ergot poisoning in
his time, which is certainly possible given where he lived
(40:48):
and when he lived. But it's also just as possible
that he was just a really imaginative, creative, highly skilled
artist who was also who was working with with with
many established symbols and motifs but also embellishing them, uh,
in just a purely creative way. It's also entirely possible
(41:08):
that he did suffer from some sort of hallucination or another.
But there are so many reasons that you could experience
an hallucination. There's so many ways that you could enter
this altered mind, uh mind space that don't involve the
consumption of ERG or any psychedelic sustenance. Sure, and then
of course there's just the hypothesis that, like Gruenwald, this
(41:29):
was his environment. He was living in a world of
of mummified limbs falling off of human you know, like
still living people, and people suffering from madness thinking that
spiders were all over their skin, right, I mean you know, yeah,
I mean, as we see in with the procession of
the cripples. In other words, I mean, he was very
interested in the common man and what the common man
(41:53):
dealt with and suffered with in life, and uh, and
so that's shading his depiction of these very religious motifs.
But again, we'll never know for sure, because Bosh doesn't
say anything about it. The only way he speaks with
us is through these these these brilliant works of art
that are still just as powerful today as they were
(42:13):
back when he was alive. Isn't it strange that such
a tiny little organism UH that doesn't even directly attack humans,
you know, like it's target is the rye, Yeah, which
is collaterally exactly where collateral damage. This little purple witch
finger extending out of a out of a plant has
caused so much trouble for humanity and for their you know,
(42:34):
all the other animals. Indeed, all right, so there you
have it. Organism in a nutshell. Um, look at the
way it is UH has influenced our history, our our biology,
our art and religion. Um. Really fascinating stuff. If you
would like to see some of these images that we've
been discussing here, check out the landing page for this
episode at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's
(42:57):
also the way you will find all the other episodes
we've done. Will find videos, you'll find blog posts. You'll
find links out to our social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook,
and Tumbler, and follow us at those accounts. By all means,
if you use those social media systems, and if you
have any interesting thoughts about urgotism or any other strange
psychedelic substances that have somehow penetrated our diet throughout the
(43:19):
years and throughout the centuries, and want to talk to
us about it, send us an email at blow the
Mind at how staff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Does it how staff
works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot 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 wonderer in the sixteenth Citree.
(00:23):
It's a time of horror and wonder, of budding possibilities
for a more informed age, as well uh as pools
of lingering shadow and superstition. You come to the Monastery
of Saint Anthony in Eisenheim, near Colmar and what is
now modern day France. Now what do you expect to find?
It's such a monastery. How is your education and entertainment
(00:45):
prepared you for such a place? Pious robed brothers praying
before elaborate altars, studious monks secluded in their libraries and
scriptoriums ah. But here you encounter the stinch of illness
and corruption. You hear the cries of the pain than
the mad. You find the hospital brothers of Saint Anthony
as they tirelessly treat victims of plague, skin disease, and
(01:08):
especially that condition known as Saint Anthony's fire or urgic poisoning.
As you make your way through the monastery, you glimpse
of blackened limbs, you hear psychotic cries, voices describing hallucination
straight from some surrealistic vision of hell, and as you
enter the sanctuary yourself, you glimpse and altar unlike anything
you've imagined before. Behold the Eisenheim altarpiece of Matthias Grunwald
(01:34):
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
(01:54):
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, so that's going
to be the subject today. But I've seen this work
of art you're talking about, You've called attention to it
before Gruenwald's Diseased Christ, and it looks like something that is,
(02:20):
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
diseased Jesus with with you know, sores and this greenish body.
(02:43):
It doesn't look like your traditional image of the of
pious Christ, right, Yeah, it's and it's it's fascinating and
it it is. When 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 does look like zombie Jesus. Yeah, So what
(03:03):
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.
(03:25):
It is a cultivated grass crops, so it's like wheat
or barley, and we can use rye to make bread's beer, whiskey.
The scientific name of this plant is secale cereal l A.
I think secale and then like cereal with any at
the end. So you're a body meeting a body coming
through the rye, and you notice that on some of
(03:47):
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 uh mockery's
of the seeds that should be in this plant. One
(04:09):
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 perpurea, and that's
a parasite that infects the ovaries, the female sex organs
(04:33):
of the plant. In grasses and the host is most
soften rye, 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 eighteen fifties when we really began to understand
the true fungal nature of the ergot, which is something
(04:54):
to keep in mind as we discussed the problems that
are mgered from human consumption of ergan. 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
due to the plants because nobody, nobody cares about the plants.
They're the ones that really suffer. So the urga itself,
what is this thing's little black, purple black finger poking
(05:17):
up out of the rye stalk. The urg it itself
is what's known as an overwintering structure. It 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. Uh and clavisups produces both sexual
and asexual spores to spread and infect new hosts. When
(05:40):
the fungal infection cycle begins, you'll often see do forming
on the ovaries of the host plants. You know where
where the seed and grain structure is, and this sticky
residue is a mixture of the plant's own sap and
then a sexually produced fungal spores called canidia. And these
a sexual spores can in effect other hosts when they're
(06:01):
spread by physical contact, so on the bodies of insects,
or even by the splashes of rain drops. I don't
know if you've seen anything about how some parasites spread
from plant to plant by the rain. And 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 it's
(06:23):
normally healthy grains are replaced by these ergo it's 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. There the
(06:45):
stromata singular stroma produced sexual spores as opposed to the
a sexual spores produced at the earlier stage called asco spores,
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
(07:07):
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
(07:28):
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 ergan 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 going to happen to you? Well,
(07:54):
some bad stuff can happen um And in this we
get into sort of the complexities of of ergotism and
ergot poisoning, because we have essentially two different forms of
ergotism that can occur. Yeah, so in these overwintering structures. Uh,
these little black fingers, they're toxic alkaloids and they can
(08:14):
have various types of effects. Right, Yeah, there are essentially
there are different strains of the of the organism that
have different effects when consumed. 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
vase of constrictor, so it constricts the blood vessels, so
(08:35):
it can severely limit the blood flow to the extremities,
which can result in a range of symptoms. Um, you
can get nausea, limb pain and this, Uh, this particular
pain in the limbs is often described as having a
burning sensation, which earned it the nickname ignis say holy
fire and this and it can also cause the skin
(08:57):
to appeal. Blisters to you occur all over and then
this can essentially even lead to to to gang green
occurring because again the blood vessels are constricted, it'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
(09:19):
this because it's just been cut off, so it's already dead. Yeah,
it's just dead tissue at this point, but it's still rotting.
It's still that the stinch can still be just completely unbearable. Yeah,
so just imagine that, because you ate the regular food
from your regular food supply coming in maybe through your
town bakery or something like that, you end up with
(09:42):
mummified feet or mummified hands and you're still alive, but
you've got blackened limbs that burn it first, then turn
black like a mummy and fall off. Yeah. It's what
kind of surreal life is this? It's terrifying, especially when
you think about it coming from consuming because we so
often don't think of bread as being this dangerous thing
(10:02):
because it's such an artificial food substance, right, right, it's
not like maynnai is left out in the sun that
you can just you know, we quickly think of as
like that's going to be a problem in your body, Right,
it's bread, what could go wrong? Okay, So that's gangernous sarchetism.
But then there's also convulsive evergotism, and this is the
nervous dysfunction variant UH, and this can also result in
(10:23):
a host of horrible things such as vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy,
the sensation of ants and spiders crawling all over your body,
what painful seizures, twitching, spasms, convulsions, blindness, deafness, um and
generally that the gastro intestinal symptoms that I mentioned. Those
(10:43):
proceed a full blown central nervous system condition, and in
its in extremes, you're also encountering hallucinations, mania and psychosis.
Can you get both strains at the same time? Oh? Yes,
that's where it gets even because I'm one, hay. Do
you have the mummified stinking flesh rotting variant, then you
(11:03):
have the madness, spiders all over me, and I'm in
just a psychotic collusiontory state. And indeed, um they can
occur concurrently, so you can get a mixed form. Though
historically we tend to see geographic areas in Europe with
greater tendency towards one form of the these versus the other,
because again we're looking at slightly different strains of the
(11:23):
fungus causing either a convulsive organginous organism. And then there's
Also this the ergic stage of the fungus contains a
storehouse of various compounds, ranging from the benign to even
as well discussed beneficial uh. 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
(11:46):
same ergic strain. So you're just kind of rolling the
like awful dungeon master dice every time you come across
some erg it in your bread. That's so scary. And
also just combine this with the fact that it was
so common in the medieval period, and you can just
imagine the confusion and the terror that went along with
(12:09):
all of this suffering. Yeah, because you have in areas
where there is a big dependency on rye bread for food,
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 um. I mean, it was it was an epidemic. Um.
(12:31):
On top of that, it tended to target the poorer
um portions of the population because the dirty your grain,
the less choice you have in your your grain source
and your bread. Uh, the more likely you are to
to encounter urgotism. Well, you know, that made me wonder,
actually how long ergotism has been a problem for grass
(12:53):
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. Livestock can
suffer from gangrenous ergitism just from eating infected grasses and grains.
And apparently this might go back a really long time.
(13:16):
I was wondering just how long his old clavicep has
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.
(13:36):
We didn't know exactly how far back this plant went.
According to a report in the journal Paleo Diversity, a
chunk of amber from Mayan Mark contains a preserved sample
of fungus structure very similar to ergat atop a grass spikelet.
That's a structure at the top of the grass. You
know that we uh where the argot would be manifest
(14:00):
and this positions urget fungus around a hundred million years old,
so well within the Cretaceous period, which means dinosaurs. Okay,
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
(14:21):
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 twenty thou pounds
having nightmarish hallucinations and doing the st Vitus dance. Wow,
I mean, I shouldn't laugh, poor poor creature. But but
(14:43):
at the same time, you have to imagine this uh,
this psychotic substance that we uh. We end up focusing
a lot on how it affects the human mind and
perception of self and even our religion. But to imagine
a dinosaur, or encountering at a dinosaur essentially uh engaging
in a dangerous um psychedelic substance, It's ah, it's pretty
(15:03):
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 the situations where,
all right, if it is every it's only going to
show up in places where you actually have civilizations consuming
a lot of rye Um. There are Assyrian tablets from
(15:27):
around the six hundred BC that speak of a quote
noxious pustule in the ear of grain. There um. We
also see South Asian zoroastron texts that right of quote
grasses that cause pregnant women to drop the womb and
die in childbirth, and those are from around four hundred
(15:47):
BC to three hundred BC. But then, you know, we
turned to the Greeks and Romans, who we often depend
on for, you know, accounts of of happenings in the
ancient world, and they were not big on rye bread,
so they make no mention of it um, which of
course really cuts into our ability to track it through
the ancient world. And yet the Greeks do, and this
(16:09):
is kind of arguable, but the Greeks do give us
the myth of the temple of el Usus, devoted to
the cult of Demeter and Persephone a literal descent into hell.
If you remember that story with Persephone abducted by Hades, etcetera.
On the temple is a literal descent into hell. No, no, no,
(16:29):
that the myth is a little exactly yeah. Um, but
but they're they're concerned with with this story. Uh, the
myth of the Temple's right. Yeah, so not to to
rehatch the whole story, but of course it involves essentially
springtime and summer being kidnapped by Hades and the inevitable
cycles of seasons that of course ties into agriculture. And
(16:52):
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 kai kion, which is a strange purple potion. Um.
And again think of clouds proparia resulting in tears, hallucinations, tremors,
(17:12):
and sweats and so some suggest that this might have
been derived from cloud steps proparia. And uh and who
better than an ancient agrarian cult to utilize the reality
warping powers of a crop fucus? 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
(17:35):
deeply tied to civilization, Like in some ways, agriculture is
sort of the definition of civilization. When do 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
(17:58):
deeply agricultural themes that are based on grains. That you know,
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 in 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 next meal is going to reach me.
(18:18):
It depends entirely on what kind of animal I can kill,
to this more dependable, cyclical nature in the very the
grarian gods that go with it. 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 and into our cultures, so
(18:39):
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 sea hell, you know,
and feel burning in our bodies is so is so
perverse and unpleasant and disruptive of what society should be,
(18:59):
which is safty instability. Yeah, of course, during 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 urgantism
is actually described in surviving accounts. Again, uh, and this
is around the time when rise introduced into Western Europe.
(19:19):
So are very early outbreaks of urgotism. We see them
documented in the Rhine Valley in the year eight fifty seven.
And again it disproportionately affects the poor, who had less
choice about you know, their grain sources and their how
dirty their grain is. Um and urg It was most
common when a harsh winter followed a cool, wet spring,
(19:40):
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 erg it 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. Um. And then from around nine hundred
(20:01):
uh ce when records uh evidently became more common in
what is now France and Germany, to around uh hundred,
see you see severe epidemics of urgotism affecting large areas
every five to ten years. Yeah, and of course it
becomes such an issue that in ten ninety three you
see the founding of a religious order, the Order of
(20:23):
hospital Ers of Saint Anthony, founded in southern France to
help those afflicted. Uh. Saint Anthony is of course the
patron saint of skin diseases, and that the malady itself
was named Saint Anthony's Fire. Uh. Anthony of course is
said to face supernatural temptations kind of hallucinatory U encounters.
So this is of course a favorite subject in Western
(20:44):
art from the medieval period onward, which makes him even
more suitable for this so the monks built over three
hundred seventy hospitals, and those who came often found some
relief from urgotism. Uh, though it's kind of you can
kind to get into the situation. How much of it
is they're treating of the skin ailments, and they also
treated other skin ailments beside or beside organism. But then
(21:07):
also while you're under their care, you're probably not continuing
to consume that rye bread while you're under the care
of the hospitalers, so that can contribute to your recovery.
Then you go back home and you're back restarted. Yet
another reason. It seems like we're all rather fortunate we
don't live in medieval Europe. Um. And of course you
(21:29):
have other things that are occurring of probably due to
organism as well as all of our Sacks points out
in his excellent book Hallucinations. Uh. Some historians attribute organ
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 fourteenth and seventeenth
century as well. So individuals suddenly behaving erratically in mass Uh.
(21:54):
You get into arguments, is this mass hysteria. Is this
more of a you know, a social contagion, or is
it indeed tied to the consumption of ergot and 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
(22:15):
up there. They're crazy, the the ideas 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 seemed they seemed possessed in some way like that
they couldn't stop, and people were afraid they didn't know
what was going on. And now, I mean, I don't
(22:36):
really see phenomenon 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 um and
we actually have an episode on this off the link
to on the the landing page of this episode. You
do see accounts where you'll say, I have a group
of school children at at at a academy somewhere, and
(22:56):
they all believe they'd come down with an illness when
there's actually no this that sort of thing. Um uh.
Also in the past, you know a few centuries accounts
of everyone in a particular area claiming to see some
sort of supernatural event, to all really see it or
is it just kind of this this group, you know,
this collective hysteria that's taking over them. Yeah, So the
(23:18):
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 which trials is interesting.
How exactly does the does the ergot theory come in here? Yes,
some historians feel that it's entirely possible that Elizabeth Paris,
the first girl to to fall ill, actually suffered from
some sort of ergot poisoning and then the rest of
(23:39):
the girls um took the opportunity to stave off their
boredom uh 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 airly complex and
(24:01):
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 where the American Colonists drugged during
the Salem Witch Trials? And in it he he points
out that, you know, one of the criticisms with some
of these the theories, uh, you know, raises the question
(24:22):
why only the girls, why not the others? Why only
six two? Why not previous years? In later years? So
when you start trying to say, you know, say urgantism
is the is the smoking gun here? Uh, there's just
so many additional questions that arise, like bread, like bread,
just to make sure we get another vacant well, terrible puns.
(24:46):
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. Now,
we mentioned that by the eighteen fifties we had a
pretty good understanding of how archetism were the last reported outbreak,
and this is by no means conclusive. There are alternative
theories for this as well. Um. The last reported outbreak
(25:08):
occurred in nineteen fifty one in pont Standard Spreit in
southern France, in which more than two cases were reported
along with four deaths. But again that's not cut and
dry either. So we mentioned the various compounds that are
that are that are in the uh, the fungus, right,
they have these alkaloids in them that can cause terrible
(25:30):
symptoms and diseases. But they can actually be used or
maybe derivatives from them can be used for legitimate medical purposes,
can't they They can? Yeah, I mean it's it's kind
of one of the you know, underlying ideas that any
kind of particularly powerful substance produced by nature, uh, it
can be utilized efficiently if if properly managed. Yeah. One
(25:52):
of my favorite technology stories is how to use animal
venom in medicine, like using scorpion venom in medicine to
treat diseases. Yeah, I mean, we we we have numerous
cases where we can take something that is in nature, uh,
this deadly substance, then we can use it for our
own benefit in a medicine or say a spice of flavoring. Um.
You know what, what is a spicy pepper added to
(26:14):
your your taco salad? But for a fun way to
see something unusual. Yeah, exactly. So with there we get.
We have a few different compounds of note UM. There's ergonovine.
This is a compound produced by clavisups Papyria that we've
used for centuries and even today to um to speed
up labor prevent postpartum bleeding. And we see it uh
(26:37):
we and in this we see the uh. The the
vaso constrictive properties of of er get put to good use,
and this is typically administered during the third stage of labor.
And then there's ERGOTAMINEU. This is useful with migraine headaches
because it reduces extra cranial blood flow. It's also a
(26:57):
serotonin agonist which can help alleviate the headaches as well.
And on top of that, they're scientists have looked into
the possibility that it could be used treating Parkinson's disease
since ergo is a dopamine agonist, meaning that it increases
the effects of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain UH.
In Parkinson's patients, dopamine transmitting neurons die off. So ergic
(27:21):
derivatives are helpful in boosting the signal between nerve cells
and the brain. And of course researchers can continue to
explore uses for compounds produced by the claviceps fungus as well.
That's right, I mean muscle relax here is potentially a
treatment of various circulatory diseases UM, and it might even
work as a possible anti tumor drugs. So you know,
(27:42):
the work continues. Again, it's a it's powerful substance, and
scientists continue to continue to come back to it and
look at possible uses for it. Right, But of course
we would be remiss if we did not discuss at
some length the relationship between ergot and psychedelic drugs. That's right, Um,
l s D in particular. Yeah, so urge actually plays
(28:04):
a role in the scientific isolation and discovery of L
s D by the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman. Right. So yeah,
Back in the nineteen thirties, researchers at the Rockville Institute
in New York isolated lesurgic acid from an ergic compound,
and the research was the basis for Albert Hoffman's work
at Sandas a pharmaceutical company. And uh, and so the
(28:27):
the roots of LSD, the the roots of of lesergic
acid lie in the isolation of the compound within it. Yeah,
so Albert Hoffman was actually the one in in the
late nineteen thirties to derive LSD twenty five lessergic acid
uh diethyla minde. And if we believe the story, it
(28:48):
was not originally created for the purpose of causing acid trips,
now that the pharmaceutical companies had other things in mind.
But but I believe the story is that Hoffman a
sedentally dosed himself with this while working with it in
the lab and began to feel weird. He began to
feel the effects of an LSD trip, and after experiencing
(29:11):
that once, he was like, oh, that was kind of interesting,
maybe worth doing some more research, And so he synthesized
a batch to test on himself, basically right. And so
I know, you know a number of people are probably wondering,
what does that mean. I can grow ergic, I can
cultivate ergic and uh and therefore create my own LSD.
Well disclaimer, we're not recommending you do this, no, not
(29:34):
at all. And uh, even if you would you wanted to,
I think you would probably stall out on this process.
But uh, according to the vaults of Rowind, which is
a nonprofit educational organization that provides information about psychoactive plants
and chemicals, Uh, it's easier to do this than depending
on morning Glory or Hawaiian baby wood rose for the
(29:56):
surgic acid amides that you need. Now, we're not gonna
walk you through the process because it's um it's a
long process. And and by the way, it includes the
recommendation quote avoid prolonged contact with the errogant compounds as
they are poisonous and can be fatal. But suffice to
say that involves a lot of sterile and chemically specific
(30:16):
handling of clavists purpruria as a first step in a
long road to synthesizing lsd YA. So in addition to
the disclaimer, it's probably gonna be difficult, difficult, and you
my poison yourself. So maybe just you know, go watch
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas again instead. There you go. Yeah,
(30:37):
but I want to get back to that disease, Jesus, Oh, yes,
get back to the The Eisenheim altarpiece of German Renaissance
paider painter at Matthias Gruenwald lived a fourteen seventy through
and uh, as with a number of these you know
older masters. You know, we don't know a whole lot
(30:57):
about his life. Uh. Most mostly his his work is
what still speaks to us. Right. So one panel illustrates
the temptation of St. Anthony in grotesque detail, with his
demon tormentors displaying clear skin ailments that are that are
clearly inspired by the skin ailments dealt with by the hospitallers. Yeah,
what were the details so that temptation My recollection is
(31:20):
that he basically went into the into the desert, into
the wilderness to to pray as you do, and so
kind of like Christ in the in the Gospel. Yeah,
but I I don't recall them making any particular offers,
like like the whole temptation of Christ. Of course, the
devil offers the you know, for Jesus to be the
king of the world and all that. Uh, there's there's
(31:42):
more of the death and offer on the table where
I think, uh St Anthony was just plagued by demons.
Do we get to turn these breads into stone? Or
now you might want to turn these breads into stones
if they are urgan infested deeds. Um. So yeah, so St.
Anthony is very much a part of the altarpiece. But
then we see this vision of the suffering Christ, which
(32:04):
we already mentioned, who clearly displays symptoms of the individuals
that were suffering in the monastery, covered with sores, gangernous flesh.
Even his hands and feet, uh, even though they're you know,
pierced by by nails. Uh, they're twisted and convulsed as
if one was suffering from convulsive right. And so it's
(32:26):
not part of the religious tradition of any Christians that
Christ actually suffered from margate poisoning. Like, that's not in
the Bible. That's not particularly a belief. This was just
sort of an interpretive lens of Gruenwald's right. Yeah. In fact,
I mean up until the thirteenth century, the predominant style
was was to depict Christ not even really suffering at all.
(32:46):
He would just be up there with his you know,
his eyes eyes open, seemings seemingly impervious to the physical torments.
It is only after that that you start displaying Jesus
as actually suffering, as a human would up there, as
opposed to just being above it like a God Um.
So really um, Gruenwald was just taking this uh to
(33:07):
the local level, you know, because he's surrounded by individuals
that are are suffering from urgotism and other scan elements,
and so historians believe that he actually used those patients
as his subjects, capturing clinical details UH and their abnormal
postures and using that as the model for not only
(33:27):
the demons assaulting St. Anthony, but but the suffering of
Christ himself. That's actually kind of a moving way of
thinking about how these people were grappling with their religion.
So if their idea is that, you know, what is
the significance of Christ, that it's you know, the powerful
God coming down to earth to suffer with humanity, it
(33:49):
would make sense that they would they would impart to
their vision of the suffering Servant, the suffering God, the
same things they were suffering from. It's sort of like
a bonding relation and ship they can form with the
God that they worship. Yeah, I mean, because ultimately you're
laying there on the floor, you're suffering from urgetism, You're
being attended to by these hospitallers. What kind of suffering
(34:11):
Christ do you want to look up at? You? Want
to see the serene like, oh, I hardly noticed I
have nails in me. You want to see the Oh
I'm I'm I'm crucified, but I'm you know, really buff
and otherwise healthy. Or do you want to see a
Christ that is suffering as you suffer? He knows what
it's like to have the limbs blacken and and to
feel the igny sassare. Yeah, yeah, I mean I agree.
(34:32):
I ultimately find it, you know, really really poignant. It
also makes me wonder how come we don't see like
a sort of modern first world problems version of Christ
on the Cross says most of us can't relate to severe, um,
you know, fleshly torment. Perhaps there's like a vision of
Christ that could be created where he just doesn't have
(34:52):
enough bars on his cell phone or is his phone
running out of batteries, you know, and because that kind
of suffering the modern millennial can you can relate to,
Let's not paint that picture. Uh speaking of painting pictures though, Um,
there are various other artistic interpretations of urgotism. Uh, there's
one that came up that I was really taken with.
(35:14):
Then it's just a minor when it's a woodcut, uh
titled St Anthony's Fire Ergotism by Johannes Vichland and this
is from around four nine, probably thirties, somewhere in there.
And we see a man with a flaming ganger in
his hand, appealing to St. Anthony. So it looks kind
of like like it reminds me the hand of Glory,
(35:35):
you know. Oh I haven't seen this. Yeah, yeah, here
it is. Here's the copy of it. Oh, that is amazing.
So you have the saint is very tall, and then
there's like a child sort of at knee level reaching
up with the crippled limbs, but a flaming hand on
fire beseeching the saint. And then uh, then there's also
(35:57):
of course U Hieronymous Bosh, who is an even more
towering figure in the history of Western art. Yes, so
the idea here is a little bit different, not so
much that the artist was inspired by a world of
people suffering from argotism, but perhaps that the artist might
have been suffering from argotism himself. Indeed, though, I mean
there are there are some works by Bosch, such as
(36:19):
the Procession of the Cripples, which features a number of
afflicted bodies uh, and at least three of them uh
seemed to be suffering from organtism. So he did a
little bit at least of observing argotism in the world
around him. Sure, I didn't mean to rule that out, no, no, no,
um And just to put Bosch in his place historically
fourteen fifty to fifteen sixteen, early, highly highly influential, a
(36:41):
Netherlandish painter known for his surrealistic, nightmarish and cryptic imagery. Um.
And this was very much a time when argotism was
epidemic uh in the Netherlands. Yeah, if you haven't seen
Bosch's paintings, actually you probably have seen them. Here's here's
the clue that you're looking at a Bosch painting. Are
there lots of little people in it? And is it crazy? Yeah?
(37:04):
Are there like crazy bird demons, chamber pots on their head?
Like just those just surrealistic visions of medieval hell coupled
with the detailed depictions of peasants and stunning realistic landscapes.
Like that's pretty much Bosch in a nutshell. And you
would probably see his work uh on like like one
out of five college dorm room walls. Not to I
(37:28):
mean not not just to say his work isn't brilliant,
because it is. I mean, I still I still can get.
You can just lose myself staring into a Bosch painting
because there it's also it's just cryptic. There's so many
symbols at play, many of which would make more sense
to a contemporary viewer, particularly in the clergy or you know,
a lay patron. There may be a little more lost
on us today, but there's a lot going on. Uh
(37:51):
and in our mind just has to grapple with it.
When we were one of his paintings, Yeah, they're they're
dark and highly imaginative. They make a rob zombie music
video look dull by comparison. In fact, he has been
His work has been a reference in a couple of
music videos. I think Metallica did one where they had
some uh some some Bosch imagery going on, and then
(38:14):
Buckethead did a music video that is just basically one
of Bosch's paintings animated. Yeah, it's it's pretty pretty stunning.
So so what's the argument here, Well, if you look
at Bosch's own Temptation of St. Anthony triptych, you'll see
that it features people with amputated and mummified feet. You
(38:36):
also see a half human, half vegetable tree woman creature. Uh.
You see an egg shaped structure belching smoke and flame.
And there's an argument here that in the sort of
the the code of the painting, that the vegetable human
is actually a man drake, which is if you if
you've ever seen the works of Guermo del Toro, you
(38:58):
know the man drake or a ry Potter, Right, It's
it's kind of human looking. The root and the herb
was used to alleviate the pains of Saint Anthony's fire
by the hospitalers. So and then on top of that,
the egg shaped structure was possibly an apothecaries retort the
distillery used to reduce medical herbs. So do you actually
(39:21):
think Bosh was suffering from the like the hallucinatory visions
of ergan poisoning? Um? I can to think not. I mean,
some some people make a you know, rather impassioned argument
for that, or even I've seen some arguments that he
maybe used some sort of ergic derived potion as part
of some sort of a cult he was in. Maybe
(39:43):
he was aligned with the Cathars. Uh. Yeah, that's almost
like what would be the Renaissance equivalent of steampunk. I
don't know alchemy alchemy, I guess, yeah, I mean certainly
there are a lot of you know, arguments of involving
Bosch's involvement with with alchemy. But but yeah, I think
it's the kind of gets back to the whole Dancing
(40:05):
Mania Salem Witchcraft thing, right, like the to to point
it to Ergotism is the single smoking gun for this uh,
for this artist and his his imagination. It's it's too easy,
and it's it's kind of limiting, you know. Yeah, with
with a lot of these hypotheses, I think very often
you have to say, well, that's interesting, but I mean
we we just don't really know, yeah, and we ultimately
(40:27):
know very little about the Hieronymous Bosh's life. It's just
he's ultimately kind of a blank canvas, and you can
in his room enough on that point canvas to put
in anything you want to be a uh, you know,
involvement in some sort of a strange uh um, you know,
psychedelic cult or you know, some some ergot poisoning in
his time, which is certainly possible given where he lived
(40:48):
and when he lived. But it's also just as possible
that he was just a really imaginative, creative, highly skilled
artist who was also who was working with with with
many established symbols and motifs but also embellishing them, uh,
in just a purely creative way. It's also entirely possible
(41:08):
that he did suffer from some sort of hallucination or another.
But there are so many reasons that you could experience
an hallucination. There's so many ways that you could enter
this altered mind, uh mind space that don't involve the
consumption of ERG or any psychedelic sustenance. Sure, and then
of course there's just the hypothesis that, like Gruenwald, this
(41:29):
was his environment. He was living in a world of
of mummified limbs falling off of human you know, like
still living people, and people suffering from madness thinking that
spiders were all over their skin, right, I mean you know, yeah,
I mean, as we see in with the procession of
the cripples. In other words, I mean, he was very
interested in the common man and what the common man
(41:53):
dealt with and suffered with in life, and uh, and
so that's shading his depiction of these very religious motifs.
But again, we'll never know for sure, because Bosh doesn't
say anything about it. The only way he speaks with
us is through these these these brilliant works of art
that are still just as powerful today as they were
(42:13):
back when he was alive. Isn't it strange that such
a tiny little organism UH that doesn't even directly attack humans,
you know, like it's target is the rye, Yeah, which
is collaterally exactly where collateral damage. This little purple witch
finger extending out of a out of a plant has
caused so much trouble for humanity and for their you know,
(42:34):
all the other animals. Indeed, all right, so there you
have it. Organism in a nutshell. Um, look at the
way it is UH has influenced our history, our our biology,
our art and religion. Um. Really fascinating stuff. If you
would like to see some of these images that we've
been discussing here, check out the landing page for this
episode at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's
(42:57):
also the way you will find all the other episodes
we've done. Will find videos, you'll find blog posts. You'll
find links out to our social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook,
and Tumbler, and follow us at those accounts. By all means,
if you use those social media systems, and if you
have any interesting thoughts about urgotism or any other strange
psychedelic substances that have somehow penetrated our diet throughout the
(43:19):
years and throughout the centuries, and want to talk to
us about it, send us an email at blow the
Mind at how staff works dot com for more on
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