St. Anthony's fire

A FRIEND BROUGHT ME A SMALL TIN box from a flea market in southwestern Alabama. It immediately brought to mind funky dance steps, hippie acid trips, relentless witch hunts, and footloose cows ....

The box once contained medicine derived from ergot, a fungus commonly infesting rye and related grasses. Our oldest recorded plant disease, ergot was first described (ca. 600 BCE) on an Assyrian cuneiform tablet as a "noxious pustule in the ear of grain." The fungus cannibalizes young rye ovaries, replacing them with its sckrotiablack, horn-shaped resting stages one to five centimeters long. In autumn the sckrotia fall to the ground to overwinter in the soil, sprouting up and sporulating the following spring. Spread by wind and insects, the spores promptly infect the next year's crop.

. . . Which is just another somewhat interesting fungal life cycle until we humans get involved. By eating ergot, intentionally or accidentally, we ingest at least forty different alkaloids, including some of the most powerful muscle contractors and vasoconstrictors ever discovered. Since ancient times, midwives have used ergot to accelerate childbirth contractions and halt postpartum hemorrhaging. Similarly, this "tin box" medicine treated the menstrual disorders amenorrhea and dysmenorrhea.

But there is often a very fine line between medicine and toxin. Ergotism-caused by the unknowing consumption of ergot-laced bread, beer, or pasta-has killed or maimed countless millions through the ages. The earliest known reference (857 GE) graphically bemoans "a great plague of swollen blisters that consumed the people by a loathsome rot, so that their limbs loosened and fell off before death." Called ignis sacer during the Middle Ages, this "holy fire" caused the excruciating sensation of burning limbs followed by ghastly gangrene, both results of vasoconstrictive alkaloids limiting blood/oxygen supply to the appendages. The Church quickly commanded a patron saint to the cause, lending to the disease the common name of St. Anthony's Fire. (Ergot apparently caused both Anthony's physical sufferings and his vivid visions.) Thousands of true believers-or at least those with intact lower limbs-trekked to Anthony's shrine in Egypt. And along the way, many experienced miraculous cures, just from eating better bread!

. . . Which leads me to those funky dance moves. Ergotism also manifested itself in a convulsive form, again based on that incredible collection of alkaloids. Here the symptoms were epileptic seizures, spastic movements, dance-like twitching, and formication. (Yes, you read that right-the feeling of being covered by ants.) So another saint arose, with this version of the ailment called St. Virus' Dance. (Did Vitus later become the patron saint of disco? I wonder.)

Sometimes the gangrenous and convulsive forms appeared together, and sometimes not. But either way, sufferers likely experienced intense hallucinations. And that's because, among those manifold alkaloids, ergot produces LSD, the exact same chemical savored by our hippie brothers and sisters. The most recent ergot outbreak struck rural France in 1951. People laughed or cried uncontrollably for days; one man spent three weeks counting pot lids in his kitchen, while another broke out of seven straight straitjackets. And many thought they could fly! (So ergot on rye makes for a very psychedelic sandwich.)

. . . Which raises numerous questions about the infamous witch hunts in this country and elsewhere. The historical record suggests that many of the affected communities suffered ergot infestations before their "witches" ran amuck. For example, everyday folks living near low, wet fields (which would naturally be more heavily ergotized) endured more numerous accusations of witchedness. And accused witches often reported being "bitten" by the Devil in the fingers, arms, or feet! Some danced and twitched spastically; others confessed (under rather painful pressure) that they "consumed" their bewitching powers as "black seed grains" in bread, beer, or porridge. But at the time, no scientist (or defense attorney) had connected those black seed grains with ergotism. Hundreds of convicted witches, consumed by the holy fire, were subsequently consumed by a less-than-holy one.

But, you ask, what about our bovine friends? Auburn University scientists recently discovered ergot growing on fescue in North Alabama pastures. Which is downright scary for cattle, who are similarly susceptible to ergot poisoning, especially during cold winter weather when their surface arterioles are already constricted. While we do not know the mental cruelties that livestock experience (although farmers describe some victims as being "overly belligerent"), the physical symptoms of ergotism certainly hold true: excitability, incoordination, and gangrene. The sad and gruesome result, fescue foot, reveals itself with the spontaneous abortion of calves and/or the sloughing of extremities-noses, ears, tongues, tails, and (especially) feet, which lends new meaning to the word "footloose."

. . . Which brings me to this two word Latinized ending: Ergo, ergot.

Larry Davenport is a professor of biology at Samford University, Birmingham.

Copyright University of Alabama Press Summer 2005
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