Salem witch trials scientific

Tituba, a slave in the Parris household, whipped up the dastardly dessert and fed it to the family dog. The concoction failed to work and Tituba was admonished for her attempted use of sorcery. She was ultimately found not guilty due to a lack of evidence. Moles, scars, birthmarks, sores, supernumerary nipples, and pretty much any skin condition that would send you to a dermatologist, fit the bill. The accused were stripped — sometimes their body hair was shaved to make sure nothing could be concealed — and publicly examined.

Martha Corey, illustration by John W. Terrified villagers would sometimes attempt to cut off or burn any suspicious marks, only to have their wounds pointed to as proof of a pact with the Prince of Darkness.

It was thought that a witch could be discovered by being pricked with needles, pins, and bodkins sharp instruments used to punch holes in cloth , until an insensitive area was found. The suspect might also be subjected to scratching by their so-called victims. The trial of George Jacobs, Salem witch trial. If their symptoms improved after digging in, it was seen as proof of guilt.

These men would travel from town to town, and were paid a tidy sum for their services. Not surprisingly, most were con artists who used sleight of hand to expose witchery. Others wielded specially designed needles — sharp on one end, blunted on the other. Another lose-lose proposition. From February to May, events escalated until residents had been accused of witchcraft. Formal action was taken against individuals, who were often chained and thrown in jail for months under harsh conditions.

At least 55 of the accused were tortured or terrified into admitting guilt. Neither the young nor the old were spared. Four-year-old accused witch Dorcas Good went insane after spending months in prison and watching her baby sister die while in jail with their mother, who was later hanged.

Three women and two infants died while imprisoned. Ultimately, 19 individuals who had refused to admit guilt were hanged and another was pressed to death.

For centuries, scholars have attempted to identify similarities among the accused. Most agree that those accused of witchcraft tended to be eccentric individuals who stood out from their Puritan neighbors in some way. Quakers , for example, were easy targets. Most of the accused were Godfearing individuals and respected townspeople.

After the hysteria was over, Massachusetts recognized the witch trials for what they were and began a centuries-long process of atonement. Judges, juries, and accusers publicly apologized, but the apologies were of little comfort to affected families. By the state had exonerated the accused from all wrongdoing and offered monetary compensations to surviving family members. In the Massachusetts state legislature officially cleared the names of the last of the accused witches.

The Crucible itself has met with censorship in some communities and has been banned from some schools. This article was originally published in Elizabeth Purdy, Ph.

Hoffer, Peter Charles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, But ergot is also a hallucinogenic; LSD, most notoriously, is derived from it. Once ingested, there are two responses to ergot poisoning, or ergotism: Convulsive ergotism causes fits, hallucinations, mania, or delirium, while gangrenous ergotism leads to necrotic tissue. In her landmark paper in Science, Caporael was the first to suggest that the Salem Witch Trials were caused by contaminated grain.

The more the villagers of Salem ate bread that had been baked using grain stores from the harvest, she argued, the more they ingested the toxin and then experienced its side effects — including hallucinations. Caporael referenced the diaries kept by villager Samuel Sewall, who noted the wet and warm spring of progressed into a hot and stormy summer. For Claviceps purpurea, the conditions were pretty much ideal.

Caporael also contended the ergot ingestion was localized, meaning that not all the grain in the area was tainted and not all the villagers were under the influence. The majority of the accusers lived to the west of the village, or they took their grain supply from farmers who lived west of the village. Eight-five percent of the accused witches lived east of Salem, as did 82 percent of the people who supported their innocence.

Ninety-three percent of the adult accusers, in contrast, lived on the east side of Salem. Juvenile accusers also followed the same pattern. Convulsive ergotism impacts the nervous system, and the accusers were known to have fits and muscle spasms. They also had hallucinations that seemed very real to them, and felt very terrifying to the people who witnessed them. Others reported that the supposed witches were vanishing from the witness stand only to reappear in the courtroom rafters.

It goes through multiple forms before it gets to that point because the tissue is dying. Other witch trials, however, have also been attributed to ergotism. The Finnmark witch trials , for example, occurred in the s in northern Norway.