Witchcraft or mycotoxin? The Salem witch trials

BACKGROUND

The Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 have been studied by many historians looking for the complex social, political, and psychological determinants behind the community-wide hysteria that led to a travesty of justice and the deaths of 20 innocent Puritans. Recently, ergot poisoning has been put forth by some as a previously unsuspected cause of the bizarre behaviors of the young adolescent girls who accused the townsfolk of witchcraft. In this essay the circumstances behind the ergot poisoning theory for this historical event are described. When the evidence is weighed carefully both pro and con, it seems unlikely that ergotism explains much of what went on in colonial Salem.

Satanism, ritual abuse, and multiple personality disorder: a sociohistorical perspective

During the past decade in North America, a growing number of mental health professionals have reported that between 25% and 50% of their patients in treatment for multiple personality disorder (MPD) have recovered early childhood traumatic memories of ritual torture, incestuous rape, sexual debauchery, sacrificial murder, infanticide, and cannibalism perpetrated by members of clandestine satanic cults. Although hundreds of local and federal police investigations have failed to corroborate patients' therapeutically constructed accounts, because the satanic etiology of MPD is logically coherent with the neodissociative, traumatic theory of psychopathology, conspiracy theory has emerged as the nucleus of a consistent pattern of contemporary clinical interpretation. Resolutely logical and thoroughly operational, ultrascientific psychodemonology remains paradoxically oblivious to its own irrational premises. When the hermetic logic of conspiracy theory is stripped away by historical and socio/psychological analysis, however, the hypothetical perpetrators of satanic ritual abuse simply disappear, leaving in their wake the very real human suffering of all those who have been caught up in the social delusion.

Witches, multiple personalities, and other psychiatric artifacts

Contemporary psychiatric misdirections derived primarily from standard medical errors of oversimplification, misplaced emphasis, and invention are reviewed. These particular errors, however, were in part prompted and sustained by the sociocultural fads and fashions of the day. The results have been disastrous for everyone--patients, families, the public and psychiatry itself.

Child testimonies during an outbreak of witch hysteria: Sweden 1670-1671

Eight hundred and nine testimonies given by children between the ages of 1 and 16 to the priests of the parish of Rättvik, and to the Royal commission of inquiry, during an outbreak of witch hysteria in 1670-71 are examined. The result implies that the capacity to separate reality from fantasy as well as the tendency to give stereotyped testimonies are related to age, social influence from other children and sex. The results also suggest that the testimonies were influenced by the person investigating the child.

False allegations of satanic abuse: case studies from the witch panic in Rättvik 1670-71

The creation of false memories, psychiatric symptoms and false allegations of satanic child abuse during an outbreak of witch hysteria in Sweden in the seventeenth century are described and related to contemporary issues in child testimonies. Case studies of 28 children and 14 adults are presented. The mechanisms underlying the spread of these allegations, as well as the reactions and influence of the adult world on the children's testimonies, are discussed.

Why did the 5th Earl of Derby die?

The unexpected death of Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby, on April 16, 1594 was an event of major political importance in the later years of Queen Elizabeth I of England. When he had succeeded his father at the age of 38 he became head of one of the most influential families in the country. He also had a claim to the throne if Elizabeth died without naming a successor. Yet within seven months of entering into his inheritance, this previously fit man was suddenly taken ill and died a fortnight later. His death was so significant that the historian John Stow recorded his illness in great detail (Fig. 1).(1) Stow's remarkable account is compatible with a sinister interpretation of the cause.

False claims of victimization: a historical illustration of a contemporary problem

In this article, a false claim of victimization made by a man in his late 20s during a 17th-century outbreak of mass allegations of Satanic abuse is described and discussed in relation to contemporary issues with relevance to psychiatry and applied mental health.

The Bargarran witchcraft trial--a psychiatric reassessment

In 1697, seven people were condemned at Paisley for using witchcraft to torment Christian Shaw, daughter of the laird of Bargarran. For seven months, Christian had bizarre seizures during which she claimed to see the Devil and her tormentors assaulting her. She also exhibited pica and said that the foreign material had been forced into her mouth by her invisible assailants. The notable Glasgow physician, Matthew Brisbane, was consulted and gave evidence at the trial; he could find no natural explanation for the pica. It is likely that Christian had a dissociative (conversion) disorder after being cursed by a servant. Christian recovered and later married the minister of Kilmaurs. After his untimely death, she established a highly successful spinning business which lead to the Paisley cotton industry.

The catechism effect: child testimonies during a 17th-century witch panic as related to educational achievement

Testimonies from 488 children given to the priests of the parish of Rättvik during a preliminary investigation of a Swedish witch panic in 1670-71 are examined in relation to records from parish catechetical meetings held in 1671. The result implies that children who knew and understood at least parts of Luther's catechism were less liable to have falsely alleged that they had been kidnapped by female satanists during the witch panic of the previous year. It is suggested that these effects were caused by differences in cognitive, social, and emotional resources among these children as compared to those who were unable to learn and understand any parts of Luther's catechism.

Witchcraft accusations and economic tension in precolonial old Calabar

M. G. Marwick has suggested that witchcraft accusations show where the tensions lie in the societies in which they occur. He also intimates that in Africa witchcraft accusations only occur between persons in close social contact. These ideas are borne out by an analysis of the cases of Efik witchcraft for which there is evidence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There witchcraft accusations for the most part involved relations by blood or marriage. But although G. I. Jones has suggested that the underlying tensions which provoke witchcraft accusations in the eastern areas of Nigeria today arise from a contracting economic situation, this was not true of Old Calabar in those days; its economy was in fact expanding under the stimulus of overseas trade. It was expansion which caused the tension, as successful business men acquired wealth and slaves, and therefore status, which contradicted their position in the traditional status system, based on age and place in lineage rather than wealth. At the highest political level these tensions manifested themselves in election disputes, where witchcraft accusations were made against candidates, in order that they take the poison ordeal and be eliminated from the election. Yet in the neighbouring states of Bonny and New Calabar, witchcraft accusations were rare. This may have been because the old descent groups had broken up, to be replaced by canoe houses, warring and trading organizations which owed their origin to the enterprise of their founders who were often slaves. Because the tensions in these societies were between competing unrelated individuals, aggression did not need to be covert. Instead rivalries could be fought in the open, as they were, Bonny and New Calabar being racked by violence and warfare.

Hybridising Medicine: Illness, Healing and the Dynamics of Reciprocal Exchange on the Upper Guinea Coast (West Africa)

The present article seeks to fill a number of lacunae with regard to the study of the circulation and assimilation of different bodies of medical knowledge in an important cultural contact zone, that is the Upper Guinea Coast. Building upon ongoing research on trade and cultural brokerage in the area, it focuses upon shifting attitudes and practices with regard to health and healing as a result of cultural interaction and hybridisation against the background of growing intra-African and Afro-Atlantic interaction from the fifteenth to the late seventeenth century. Largely based upon travel accounts, missionary reports and documents produced by the Portuguese Inquisition, it shows how forms of medical knowledge shifted and circulated between littoral areas and their hinterland, as well as between the coast, the Atlantic and beyond. It shows that the changing patterns of trade, migration and settlement associated with Mandé influence and Afro-Atlantic exchange had a decisive impact on changing notions of illness and therapeutic trajectories. Over the centuries, cross-cultural, reciprocal borrowing contributed to the development of healing kits employed by Africans and non-African outsiders alike, which were used and brokered by local communities in different locations in the region.

Medicine, belief, witchcraft and demonic possession in late seventeenth-century Ulster

Ireland's only published witchcraft pamphlet, written by Daniel Higgs, The Wonderful and True Relation of the Bewitching of a Young Girle in Ireland, What Ways she was Tormented, and a Receipt of the Ointment that she was Cured with (1699), works within the confines of late seventeenth-century demonology, while upholding the patriarchy of the fledgling Protestant Ascendancy. More importantly, it provides rare insight into early modern Protestant witchcraft beliefs, highlights the limits of contemporary medical care and provision and details the pathways of self-medication people resorted to. Higgs' method of promoting self-medication as a cure to bewitchment and demonic possession was based on a remedy described in an obscure Renaissance magical text. To promote his 'cure' the pamphlet included a particularly vitriolic critique of the established Irish medical profession, as self-regarding and incompetent witchcraft deniers. This article uses Higgs' pamphlet to explore the limits to/of medical knowledge in early modern Ireland and Europe.