Witchcraft at Salem In 1692, nineteen villagers were put to death in Salem, Massachusetts. The reason for conviction was the torment of teenaged girls by supernatural means: witchcraft. These teenagers had experienced "pricking" and "pinching" sensations, and some contorted into strange bodily positions, reaching unusual postures of extreme rigidity. The village doctor blamed the abnormal behavior on the supernatural; he delared, "An evil hand is on them."(1) With those words began the greatest witchhunt in America's history. In 1976, Linnda Caporeal from the University of California at Santa Barbara explained the actions of the girls as the effects of an illness resulting from the ingestion of ergot--a fungus with LSD-like properties that resides in rye. Perhaps this is not the true cause of the strange behavior, but to the twentieth century world, it is a justification....

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