One of the best things about your day today is not waking up to ergot poisoning. Unfortunately, this condition caused great suffering to many throughout history. In the Middle Ages, people called it “St Anthony’s Fire,” after a 4th-century saint who was said to have endured hallucinations and burning sensations — two of the many horrific manifestations of the disease. Ergotism comes from a fungus that affects grains — mainly rye — and thrived in the cold and damp growing conditions of Medieval Europe. The fungus that causes ergot is related on a molecular level to LSD, and has been used medicinaly to cause abortions and treat migraines (it is still used for the latter). However, its consumption usually causes horrible seizures, psychosis, vomiting, and gangrene of the limbs — reusulting in pustules and sores which ultimately causes necrosis and loss of tissue. The French historian Francois Eudes de Mezeray described a village which was hard hit with ergotism in the tenth century: “The afflicted thronged to the churches and invoked the saints. The cries of those in pain and the shedding of turned-up limbs alike excited pity; the stench of rotten flesh was unbearable.” The image you see here of a person suffering from advanced Ergotism is a close-up of the 16th-century “Isenheim Altarpiece,” and was painted by Matthias Grunewald. Grunewald undertook this work for a hospital that specialized in treating St Anthony’s Fire. Although the hospital might have provided comfort for the afflicted, modern antibiotics are the only reliable cure for the disease. (Ergotism is rare in the developed world today.)
Source(s): Quote from National Geographic, Nov 27, 2018 “What was saint Anthony’s Fire?: the medieval Killer in the Rye” article by Angel Sanchez Crespo. Image discussion from Smithsonian Magazine, Stanley Meisler, August 31 1999, “A Masterpiece Born of Saint Anthony’s Fire.”
