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In the context of the Salem witch panic, maybe. The hallucinogenic effects of ergot, a fungus that grows on rye, barley and other wheat crops does match up with many of the symptoms of witchcraft in Salem. But, the distribution pattern of the afflictions doesn't match up with how ergot poisoning would reasonably appear. The afflictions were sporadically spread throughout Salem, but ergot is likely to affect whole households and not just scattered persons. Put simply, one would expect that more people from the same households would be affected by ergot because they would have all eaten from the same bag of possibly infected grain. To shorten this, ergot is plausible in terms of symptoms, but a shaky theory in regards to other details.

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11y ago
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