Ergot
Claviceps purpurea
Saint Anthony's Fire: the burning, the visions, the amputated limbs, the dancing plague.
Overview
Ergot is not a plant. It is a fungus that colonises the grain of rye — and less commonly wheat, barley, and wild grasses — replacing the developing seed with a hard, dark purple-black body called a sclerotium, shaped like a small curved tooth, visible at harvest if you know to look for it. If you do not know to look for it, or if the harvest is careless, it enters the flour. The alkaloids it contains — ergotamine, ergonovine, and related compounds — act on serotonin and dopamine receptors, constrict blood vessels, cause convulsions, and induce visions of extraordinary intensity. In sufficient quantity, they cause gangrene, madness, and death.
Botanical Notes
A parasitic ascomycete fungus infecting grasses of the tribe Poeae; most significant in rye (*Secale cereale*) but documented in over 400 grass species. Infection begins via conidia spread by insects to the ovary of the host flower; the fungus colonises and replaces the grain tissue with a dense mycelial mass (honeydew stage) before hardening into the characteristic purple-black sclerotium, 1–3cm, protruding from the grain head. Sclerotia fall to the ground and overwinter; in spring they produce small, stalked fruiting bodies (stroma) that release ascospores to restart the cycle. The sclerotia contain lysergic acid derivatives including ergotamine, ergonovine, and ergocristine; it was from ergot alkaloids that Albert Hofmann first synthesised LSD-25 in 1938.
Lore & History
The histories of ergot poisoning are histories of catastrophe that was not understood as poisoning. Saint Anthony's Fire — *ignis sacer*, the sacred fire — was the name given to outbreaks of convulsive and gangrenous ergotism that struck European grain-growing communities from the early medieval period onward. The gangrenous form produced burning pain in the extremities, followed by dry gangrene and the loss of limbs; the convulsive form produced seizures, hallucinations, and the peculiar phenomenon of groups of people dancing uncontrollably and unable to stop. The Dancing Plague of 1518, in Strasbourg, during which hundreds of people danced in the streets for days without eating, sleeping, or stopping, until some died of exhaustion, has been attributed to ergot contamination. The Salem witch trials of 1692 have been linked, speculatively but persistently, to ergotism in the rye harvest of the previous year. Hofmann's synthesis of LSD from ergot alkaloids in 1938 — a compound he initially considered a medical accident — brought the fungus into the twentieth century by a different door.
Warnings
Extremely dangerous. The alkaloids cause ergotism in two forms: gangrenous (vasoconstriction leading to dry gangrene of extremities) and convulsive (seizures, hallucinations, spasms). Symptoms begin with formication — a sensation of insects crawling under the skin — and progress through vomiting, diarrhoea, and convulsions. Modern milling regulations have made ergot poisoning from commercial flour rare in developed countries, but the sclerotia remain present in wild and artisan-grown grain. Never consume grain with visible dark, tooth-shaped bodies. There is no antidote; treatment is supportive.