Ergot is a fungus which grows on rotted rye-grains and happens to be a small microscopic purple mushroom growing on the sclerotum of a fungal grain of rye . Not wheat.
If consumed as is, it is the known cause of ergotism or what iss commonly referred to as St. Anthony's Fire.
The name of St. Anthony came from a priest who lived in the 2nd century and had an afinity with animals.
St. Anthony was also known as a priest who carried Bell, Book and Candles. Those later three items have always been associated as witches familars.
Fromthe 14th to the 17th century, villages and towns in western Europe had bakerys which sold rye breads which were infected and contaminated with ergot and thus caused mass ergotism in their villages. anywhere up to ten thousand people were reported to have dies during some of these ergotism outbreaks during this period in history.
The disease hardly hit England at all beause the English consumed wheatbreads rather than a lot of rye.
There were two forms of ergotism, gangranous and convulsive. In the gangranous forms, limbs were known to rot and fall off and the in the Convulsive forms, hallucinations were often reported as some of the symptoms of the toixicity of this deadly fungus.
It did not affect women and chilren as much as it did others.
The churches set up to help the afflicted called the disease St. Anthonys Fire because of the sensation that your body was burning up and for the priest who helped others less fortunate than him.
Similar fire and burning sensations were also associated with small pox, when that latter disease hit the Hawaiian Islands and the Hawaiians would run intothe ocean to cool off and then die from pneumonia.
In the ealry and mid 17th and 18th centuries, the French learned what was causing the ergotism and were able to stop it before it spread in the many bakery products sold in Europe at the time.
About the same period, midwives in both America and Europe learned that in a very minute amount, that certain chemicals in found in the ergot fungus stopped post partum hemoraging during childbirth.
It is a known fact that many mothers died during this period in history because midwives did not know how to stop the bleeding after childbirth.
Then in the middle to late 1930's Dr. Albert Hofmann
accidently found that he had created LSD. It was his 25th experiment on the lysergic acid amides he was working with whiile creating obstetic medicines.
Ergot also can cause aborts in animals with late or difficult diliveries and the same in humans who are late for their periods.
That is why zoo phamlets sometimes have warnings about please do not feed the animals LSD and/or other drugs. This was a problem in the 1970's and 1980s.
I actually met a person in Oregon years ago who did that very thing and because of his stupidty his best friend was eaten by the lions at the Portland, Oregon Zoo.
He and a friend thought it was cool to feed the lions LSD laced meat. They were fooling around at the lions den in themiddle of the night when his friend was teasing the lions and fell to the bottom of the den. OF course the lions chewed hims completely rendering him in to a meaty boney piece of human.
Then my friend went home and got his dad's shotgun and came back and killed all of the lions at the zoo. I Cannot remember how many. It made the newspapers and that is where I first read about it years before I met him at Laurelhurst Park in SE Portland.
A judge commited him to Damash (Thats where One flew over the cuckoos nest was filmed at and about).
Cam you image being stoned on acid and watching a lion or many killing and then munching on your best friend.
Years later in Florida, I applied for a job at the Jacksonville Zoo. Although I did not gt the job, I did get a free pamphlet from the zoo which actually warned people about not feeding animals LSD because it would cause them to abort. I still have that phamplet and someday i will post the paragraph about that.
Furthermore, there is no speed in LSD. It has some speed/amphetamine like actions because of the long duration of the high. But there is no way you could put enough amphetamine on a small piece of blotter acid to cause any noticible effects.
mj
Edited by mjshroomer (05/12/02 07:56 AM)
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