Ergot

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One of the most fascinating of the natural hallucinogens comes from a fungus called ergot, which grows on the grains of grasses, especially rye (Secale), but occasionally on barley (Hordeum), wheat (Triticium), and several wild grasses. An infected grain produces a hard, black, spur-like structure called a sclerotium. In fact, the name ergot comes from the French word argot, which means spur.
Ergot has been known and used for many centuries, and it was even described in an Assyrian tablet as the "noxious pustule in the ear of grain." In ancient times ergot was also known as "mad grain" and "drunken rye." Then later in European history, there were periodic plagues, which had many symptoms, depending on the dosage of ergot. The possible effects were (mild to severe): (1) burning and convulsions, (2) hallucinations with imaginary sounds, (3) gangrene and loss of limbs, (4) permanent insanity, and, occasionally, (5) death. The initial burning sensation led to the Latin name ignis sacer, which means holy fire. This human malady was so horrible that in 1093 a religious order was founded in southern France to help those afflicted; St. Anthony was the patron saint, so the malady, now called ergotism, was then named St. Anthony's fire.
It is now fairly widely thought, based on the research of Linnda Caporael (1976) and later Mary Matossian, that the seven girls and women tried in the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials in 1692 were suffering hallucinations and other symptoms of ergotism (convulsive ergotism). Similar eruptions of ergotism also occurred in Essex County and Fairfax County, Connecticut. In that year, the weather was damp and cool, and rye plants of New England would have had much ergot, which forms sclerotia under those cool, moist conditions. Infants died from consuming contaminated mother's milk. A famous outbreak of ergotism occurred in Sologne, France in 1777, when 8000 people died of gangrenous ergotism. The last major outbrea...