Le Pain Maudit (The Cursed Bread)
In the spring of 1951, over 250 people in the lovely town of Pont St. Esprit were sent into a month long shrieking hell of hallucinations and no sleep. None. Many had permanent psychological damage. It seems that one of the local bakers, Roch Briand, accepted a sack of decayed rye flour in exchange for good flour. Whatever it was, the dough raised blisters on the bakery employees and was used for bread anyway. The very, very likely suspect is ergot poisoning. This was an extremely bad trip.
Seven died, over 50 had to be put in Asylums.
Hieronymus Bosch, The Temptation Of Saint Anthony.
Mass ergot poisoning was known in the middle ages as St. Anthony's Fire. Limbs would go gangrenous and fall off, with other symptoms identical to the Pont St. Esprit nightmare. (As far as I know the gangrene thing was not present at the Pont St. Esprit episode).
Ergot induced gangrene.
Temptation of St. Anthony, detail. This is from the Isenheim Alter, Niclaus of Haguenau and Matthias Gruenwald, artists. There have been many who claim the CIA deliberately poisoned this French town as a biowar experiment. This is total bullshit. LSD does not induce symptoms like that.
I first read about this in High Times c. 1977. This was the book that the magazine used for the article. I later found it about a decade ago and if you wish to read horror stories, this is the book for you.
Ergot infected rye. In the old days, people knew damn well what would happen if they ate this. The problem was that rye was the staple grain and if you did not eat what you had, you did not eat.
So, who wants some toast?
Comments
Post a Comment