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Ransom Riggs
How to go old-school psycho: St. Anthony’s Fire
by Ransom Riggs - April 24, 2007 - 12:27 PM
anthony2.jpg

On the wall of a simple Romanesque church in the tiny French village of Lavardin, there is a strange fresco. It depicts the figure of an uncannily calm St. Anthony ministering to a horde of writhing, sufferers of what is today known as “St. Anthony’s Fire.” Anthony was a hermetic monk who lived in third century Egypt, and was known to suffer great psychological trials, regarded as assaults on him by Satan. These included horrific visions, hallucinations and frightening voices. The psychological condition was named when, in another remote French village in 1151, hundreds of people went mad. They had hallucinations, writhed in agony in their beds, vomited, ran crazily in the streets and suffered terrible burning sensations in their limbs. It was eventually discovered, however, that rather than being tortured by the Devil, the townspeople had consumed bread tainted by a fungus that grows on rye grass, called ergot. Check out The Temptation of St. Anthony, and get the skinny on ergot, after the jump:

Ergot, according to Medicinenet, “contains a chemical called ergotamine that makes the sufferers go berserk and causes gangrene of the hands and feet due to constriction of blood supply to the extremities. If it is not treated (and this was not possible in the Middle Ages), victims had the sensation of being burned at the stake, before their fingers, toes, hands and feet dropped off. In moderate doses, ergotamine causes the contraction of smooth muscle fibers, such as those in small arteries. Ergotamine has been used to control hemorrhage (bleeding) and to promote contraction of the uterus during childbirth. It is also used to treat migraine headaches (its major use today). But in large doses, ergotamine paralyzes the motor nerve endings of the sympathetic nervous system.”

In other words, this happens:
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Comments (13)

  1. well tht sounds like a barrel of laughs

    posted by Megan on 4-24-2007 at 12:54 pm

  2. Is that what they may have happened to provoke the Salem Witch Trials?

    posted by Milica on 4-24-2007 at 1:06 pm

  3. Erm… interesting, to say in the least.

    NASTY!!!

    posted by Kiki on 4-24-2007 at 1:29 pm

  4. Milica – from what I have read there was (allegedly) rye seed that had grown the ergot fungus. Evidence of this was found in Salem. The women were exposed to it and went bonkers thus acting like those in cahoots with the devil. Wish I could remember where I found the info!

    posted by Jane on 4-24-2007 at 1:39 pm

  5. If you search for ergot on Damn Interesting.com, there’s an article on it and Salem….

    posted by Lyssa on 4-24-2007 at 2:16 pm

  6. Isn’t rye ergot the base ingredient in LSD?

    posted by Dave on 4-24-2007 at 2:35 pm

  7. Ergot has been used as an abortificant for ages, maybe thousands of years. It takes skill to know how much is not too much.

    posted by Miss Cellania on 4-24-2007 at 6:07 pm

  8. Anthony is a trippy dude.

    posted by ajadoniz on 4-24-2007 at 8:28 pm

  9. I thought egrot caused St Vitus Dance not St Anthonys Fire.

    posted by John Dough on 4-25-2007 at 12:01 am

  10. This was the major theme in Robin Cook’s book “Unacceptable Risk”.

    posted by CHERYL HOYT on 4-25-2007 at 6:34 am

  11. Sounds like fun . . . it reminds me somewhat of Dulle Griet, a painting by Pieter Brueghel in 16th century Belgium. Except, of course, it would be the opposite, with a bunch of village women attacking demons.

    posted by Allison on 4-25-2007 at 9:52 am

  12. The way I understand current theories of the Salem witch panic, the victims (”witches”) weren’t doing anything crazy. Ergotism may have played a role by convincing other folks in the community that they had been cursed, so they looked around for a source. They tended to point their fingers at women who owned property their neighbors coveted and who didn’t have strong family connections to protect them. Funny, that.

    posted by Kathleen on 4-25-2007 at 2:00 pm

  13. Yep, definitely the stuff in LSD (might be in synthetic form though). Also, if I remember correctly, The Temptation of St. Anthony was used as a painting in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “Breakfast of Champions”. It was a minimalist painting by a fellow named Rabo Karabekian. It wasn’t the same painting, of course – in the book it was a piece of tape on a colored canvas

    posted by Edward on 4-25-2007 at 5:56 pm

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