Ergot Poisoning: The Salem Witch Trials

The Salem witch trial is one of the most mystifying parts in history and there are a lot of explanations to why the girls acted like that during the trials. The symptoms of the girls were: joking, vomiting, strangely ill, spouting gibberish, and bodies turning in odd positions. The two explanations that I believe could be the most plausible is, ergot poisoning, and boredom. Ergot poisoning, is something a person could get from eating rye or bread that has fungus growing into the body of the food. Historians claims that ergot poison could explain, why the girls blamed people for being witches since the symptoms were the same as ergot poisoning. The symptoms of eating ergot is, cold chills, hallucinations, vomiting, and choking, which are the exact same fits the girls did in the Salem witch trials. …show more content…
Although, the reason it could not be plausible is that the whole town would be affected by ergot poisoning and not just a certain group of girls. Next, the girls were believed to be bored of their quit Puritan life and that blaming people for witchcraft was for them to do something different in their boring life. I believe this is also true, because in one of the articles it said that Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Parris would talk about witchcraft and try to envision people's futures. The explanation could really just be that the girls were bored of their life, which is a true factor the life a _Puritan girl was not the most exciting. The girls apart of the Salem witch trial could be explained by lots of factors, but the most believe is that the girls were either sick or bored of their personal