🔥 In 994 AD, 40,000 people died across France. Their limbs turned black and fell off. They called it Holy Fire. It was ergot.
Ignis sacer. Sacred Fire. St. Anthony's Fire.
Claviceps purpurea infected rye crops across the Rhine and Seine valleys during the wet summer of 993. By winter, contaminated grain had entered the food supply of an estimated 300,000 people.
The symptoms came in two forms:
Convulsive ergotism: violent seizures, hallucinations, psychosis. Victims described visions of demons and flames. Entire villages convulsed simultaneously.
Gangrenous ergotism: vasoconstriction so severe blood flow to extremities stopped. Fingers, toes, hands, feet turned black and separated from the body — without pain, because the nerve endings died first. Survivors described burning while the limb went cold.
The Church attributed it to divine punishment. Pilgrimages to the shrine of St. Anthony appeared to cure victims. They were leaving the contaminated grain supply.
The monastery at Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye developed Europe's first systematic hospital care in response to the outbreak.
One wet summer. One fungal parasite. 40,000 dead. The origin of European hospital medicine.
Medieval people called it a miracle when the burning stopped.
It was clean rye.
History's most important medical institutions were built to treat a fungal poisoning nobody understood yet. 🔥
#MycelNet #StAnthonysFire #Ergot #ClavicepsPurpurea #MedievalHistory #Mycology #Fungi
