I'm looking for any modern interpretation on the following cases that were attributed to Witchcraft (followed by a kangaroo trial & a hanging). I appreciate witness statements are vague but was wondering if there was any milage in the likes of epilepsy, MS, Lyme Disease, Ergot, gout, various vitamin / mineral deficiencies,  chronic fatigue syndrome or anything else, that could be possible as I'm not a doctor.  It's related to some cave investigations I'm undertaking.  All the victims were female (as were those hanged for Witchcraft).  Any illumination most appreciated. PM me if don't wish to post here, any replies treated in confidence.

Case 1: Started Feb 1681
?on or about the second day of February 1681 she was taken in great pain in her head and all her limbs, which continued on her until near or upon the first day of August then following and then her pains began to abate, and she was able to walk abroad to take the air, but in the night season she was in much pain and not able to take her rest.?  Pains resumed on 01 June with, ? In that very night she was taken very ill with sticking and pricking pains, as though pins and awls had been thrust into her body, from the crown of her body to the soles of her feet, and she lay as though it had been upon a rack.?  And on 30 June, ? she was again pricked and pinched to the heart, with such cruel thrusting pains in her head, shoulders, arms, hands, thighs and legs, as though the flesh would have been then immediately torn from the bones with a man's fingers and thumbs.?

Case 2: c. May1681
?about the middle of May last past she was taken with very great pains of sticking and pricking in her arms, breast, and heart, as though divers awls had been pricked or stuck into her body, and was in great tormenting pain for many days and nights together, with a very little intermission.?

Case 3: Chronic since 1680 to 1681/2
?she was taken in tormenting pains, by pricking in her arms, stomach and heart, in such a manner as she was never taken before..... She hath continued ever so since more or less every week.?

Edit: All persons were in a coastal merchant town with consequent dodgy sanitation and and influx and change of various people, rather than a rural type location.

I'm not a doctor so can't answer your question but take a look at the Pendle Witches (loads of info. on t'internet). At least one incident of witchcraft has been attributed to a stroke - http://www.lancastercastle.com/the-pendle-witches
There are some interesting and very creepy stories on www.pendlewitches.co.uk if you want a bit of background.
Thankfully the inhabitants of the Pendle area are a bit more enlightened now - well some of them

Because you mention a coastal town it makes me think about measures taken to control plague. As plague declined in England in the 1660s it continued on the continent and measures were taken to prevent a recurrence in England such as quarantine of ships. A peak in cases on the continent occurred around 1680.

I'm not saying that this case was plague but from the limited information you give us maybe the treatment given to the person might have been connected with controlling plague.

BTW - Some men were hanged for witchcraft.

Some of the symptoms (the pricking sensation) could refer to ergotism, but I'm not sure how widespread the problem was in Britain, as I don't think rye was ever cultivated in large amounts here - it seems to have been a more mainland Europe problem. Though possibly a coastal town may have had access to recently-imported infected grain perhaps. It does affect other grass species like wheat, but not to the same degree. 'St. Anthony's Fire', cased by ergot poisoning was usually described as an intense burning sensation, so whether the 'pricking' is another description for that is hard to establish.

Thanks very much for the answers so far.  Re: "BTW - Some men were hanged for witchcraft." yes absolutely, just not in this particular instance.

Where was this coastal port? Climate/weather conditions may be relevant to the diseases available.

Ergotism would be a possibility as would an acute porphyria (acute intermittent or variegate the most likely). However, if it was a warm water port or if it imported salt fish from somewhere relatively warm, I would suggest a marine biotoxin such as ciguatoxin (comes from dinoflagellates and accumulates in top predator fish such as amberjack, wrasse etc). I've seen one patient with similar symptoms brought on by eating inappropriate sushi...

Hi, port is Bideford, North Devon, UK.  At the time it was a reasonably major trading port with a lot of trade to the colonies and did get hit by the plague in 1646.

Another possibility is that these are non-organic symptoms or somatisation disorder (old-fashioned hysteria). Especially case 3 - repetitive or recurrent symptoms lasting a long time and (presumably) not leading to death or severe physical deterioration tend to suggest that either the whole condition is non-organic or that there is an underlying problem but that the symptoms are exaggerated (whether consciously or not).

tertiary syphilis....
Nietzsche is a possible example.

It sounds most like ergot poisoning to me, the vaso-constriction effect of the ergotamine can cause a severe burning or prickling sensation, think "dead arm" but much worse. In extreme cases the extremeties can go gangrenous.  The effects of tertiary syphillis were well-known in 17th Century England (watch "The Libertine" for an example of this) so I'd be less inclined to think it was that.

What about dengue fever?although not seen in the UK currently it has an insect vector and could have come in with a ship.

Web article linking ergotism to Salem witches:

http://customers.hbci.com/~wenonah/history/ergot.htm

A lot of what was attributed to witchcraft in the past was as correctly said earlier actually attributed to psychoactive compounds ingested by the "witch". The classic take of a witch flying on her broomstick or having been away for a week long dance with the devil aren't actually true in reality but may have certainly been true in the reality inside the witches mind at the time.

One of the main sources of ergot was, and still is, from the growing of rye, again someone mentioned this earlier, however it's important to note that rye itself is not a source of ergot it is actually the fungus Claviceps purpurea which grows on rye that contains ergot and not all plants have the fungus. Ergot is the natural precursor to LSD but LSD was not invented until the twentieth century, but still has its own effects. Nature's equivalent to LSD is mainly LSA and LSH, to be fair mainly A as H breaks down to A very quickly. Generally the highest concentration is found in the seeds of certain plants.

Anyway I'm getting carried away. In general the ethnobotanicals used a lot by witches when off on a jolly for a week were from a different class of hallucinogen and rather than being a psychedelic like LSA were getting into the evil world of the deleriants. Nightshades such as Datura were widely used for this purpose and assuming the effect was not death through toxicity the witch would for all intent and purposes been in hell for the duration which could be a week. They would have no grip on reality and would experience true hallucinations in that they are so real that there is no way to comprehend that they aren't real, and also they would have no knowledge they were under the influence of anything or even that they had consumed anything. Nightshades have their own set of chemical compounds completely unrelated to ergot or any of its analogues and it had no vasoconstriction characteristics however it can have a hell of a body load with one of the symptoms being extreme prickling sensations which has on occasion led to the ripping off of one's own skin to try to alleviate.

So I've waffled a bit apologies, and it's my first post so hello to everyone I'll catch you in normal caving chat soon I'm sure. But to sum up, I propose a member of the n nightshade family as a potential source

[Edit.. you said this was cave related which has just brought something else to mind. Caves are dark areas and nightshades can increase light sensitivity by massive amounts to the point that light is painful, also on a lower dosage you would received the full physical symptoms such as the prickling without going into a state of delerium]

*pedant mode ON*

Daturas and the Nightshade Family are two completely different plant groups


*pedant mode OFF*

RE british witches: a more likely (and possibly safer) source of psychoactive chemicals was probably mushrooms....

droid said:

*pedant mode ON*

Daturas and the Nightshade Family are two completely different plant groups


*pedant mode OFF*

RE british witches: a more likely (and possibly safer) source of psychoactive chemicals was probably mushrooms....

Click to expand...

Just to be an uber-pedant, I would point out that both are members of the Solanaceae family, though Daturas are primarily a new world plant, so the Atropines are more likely for UK past use though given the location and date, importation from the Americas is a possibility. There may be other plants potentially capable of producing the effects described in sub-toxic doses, though I'd need to go and look up the effects.

Haha yes I'll put my hands up, I should have used a better nightshade or one that actually was a nightshade but I think you get my meaning, what they have in common is the higher plant order and the tropane alkaloids such as atropine.

D.stramonium was cultivated in the UK by 1597 and was used as an asthma treatment according to the Biological Records Centre.

It was the witch connection that got me thinking of these plants, as for mushrooms I don't know enough about muscamol to comment on A.muscaria, so possibly that? I can't through research and reports imagine that the "pleasurable" tingling sensation from the Psylocybe species we have would be enough to cause the user to think of it as a horrid prickling. Obviously it's a hallucinogen so users experience may vary

Having looked up the effects of Fly Agaric, also Henbane and Hemlock, I don't think any of them are likely candidates for causing the effects described -  ergot poisoning through eating contaminated bread is still the best match. The reason I say eating bread rather than drinking beer made from contaminated grain is that the alkaloids that cause the vasoconstriction are fat-soluble, while the LSD precursuors are water soluble IIRC, and so the beer might give hallucinatory effects, but not St. Anthony's fire.

Having tried Fly Agaric, Mandrake, Morning Glory seeds, and Datura Stramonium, none of them created a prickling or burning sensation, that's for sure. Didn't bother with Henbane or Hemlock. That's just weird.

Was that a recent experiment, or something you did in your wild and mis-spent youth?

I understand that hemlock extract causes progressive numbness rather than pricking sensations.

I was reading through some back issues of Archaeology Today and found an interesting item on page 48 of issue no. 315 from June last year.  Apparently in 1671 a guy called Joseph Blagrave published "a book called Astrological Practice of Physick, which gives a recipe for inserting pins into a bottle full of heated urine so as to cripple a witch with intense bladder pain."

You could try that - it might be a tad less lethal than the Scourge of Socrates.

Thanks for the comments forumites (I'm not sure if there is a collective noun but happy to be enlightened).  The ergot & hysteria seem quite interesting and do seem to recur in other witch type events (inc. Salem in the USA) so maybe at the top of the list.  The Dengue fever and marine biotoxins are also intriguing as I suppose there could actually have been several different vectors at play.  I was also originally wondering if there could be any link to more progressive things such as MS or MND for longer term events.
Some witness accounts do perhaps seem to be to us to be more than a little 'circumstantial', but back then were a smoking gun such as a 'cat seen walking into a house', or 'a magpie flying in a window' (slightly paraphrased) which were therefore the Devil visiting in animal form, which confounds ultimate accuracy.  Anyway it has been a help in analysing what could be going on at the time.  Any other thoughts are also appreciated.