St Anthony's Fire - Ergotism

Not in years had France seen such rain. Farmers slogged stolidly out to their fields to harvest the sodden crops, mill the grain and send it on its way. In little (pop. 4,400) Pont-Saint-Esprit, perched on a bluff along the River Rhone in southern France, the townspeople sat glumly in their bistros sipping wine, watching the swollen river slip past the medieval bridge which gives the town its name.

Then, without warning, pain and sudden death clutched Pont-Saint-Esprit. On a Saturday night three weeks ago, the town's doctors began getting calls from people complaining of heartburn, stomach cramps and fever chills. At first, they thought it was a mild epidemic of meat poisoning. But the calls kept flooding in. By Monday, 70 houses in the village had become tiny hospitals, with most of their families in bed. Then the doctors found their first clue: every one of the patients had eaten bread from the shop of Baker Roch Briand. All eight of Pont-Saint-Esprit's bakeries were ordered temporarily shut.

Red Flowers & Molten Lead. That night the first man died in convulsions. Later, two men who had seemed to be recovering dashed through the narrow streets shouting that enemies were after them. A small boy tried to throttle his mother. Gendarmes went from house to house, collecting pieces of the deadly bread to be sent to Marseille for analysis. Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead. Pont-Saint-Esprit's hospital reported four attempts at suicide.

What was the mysterious madness? Pont-Saint-Esprit speculated that the village idiot had hexed Baker Briand's flour, that the flour had been packed in fertilizer sacks, that rats in the grain elevator had contaminated the flour. The police knew better. They had traced the flour back from Briand's bakeshop through the government-controlled flour depot to a mill near Poitiers, nearly 300 miles away.

The Parasite. Last week the word came back from the police laboratory:"We have identified a vegetable alkaloid having the toxic and biological characteristics of ergot, a cereal parasite." Pont-Saint-Esprit had been stricken by ergot poisoning, a medieval disease as old as its proud bridge, so old that it had almost been forgotten. Modern medicine knows about ergot, but has rarely seen it in the form of an epidemic disease.* It is a black fungus that grows on wet grain, contains chemicals that powerfully affect the blood vessels and the nervous system. Doctors often use ergot extracts to start contractions in the uterus in childbirth.

In the Middle Ages, growing uncontrolled in wet summers, ergot was no such helpful friend. The disease was called "St. Anthony's Fire," and raged periodically through Europe. Monastic chroniclers wrote of agonizing burning sensations, of feet and hands blackened like charcoal, of vomiting, convulsions and death. Whole villages were driven mad. That, in effect, was what had happened to Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951.

By week's end, French police had found the miller who ground the ergot-laden rye and a man who acknowledged selling him the grain, charged them both with involuntary homicide. In Pont-Saint-Esprit, the toll of illness passed 200; four had died, 28 were still on the critical list. France considered itself lucky: all the contaminated grain seemed to have gone into that one bag of flour delivered to Baker Roch Briand


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,815355-2,00.html#ixzz0bhDFMQL7

Anthony the Great (c 251–356), (different from St Antony of Padua) also known as Saint Anthony, Anthony the Abbot, Anthony of Egypt, Anthony of the Desert, Anthony the Anchorite, Abba Antonius (Ἀβᾶς Ἀντώνιος), and Father of All Monks, was a Christian saint from Egypt, a prominent leader among the Desert Fathers. He is celebrated in many churches on his feast days: 17 January in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Western churches; and Tobi 22, (January 30) in the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Coptic Catholic ChurchSt.
Anthony was a third century Egyptian ascetic, who lived an unblemished life in the desert near the Red Sea, fasting for long periods, which was probably the reason for the visions and temptations he is said to have experienced. He believed them to be the work of the devil, and resisted steadfastly. In his own lifetime, Anthony had no direct connection with ergotism, however his name was taken by an Order of Hospitallers, founded in France about 1100. The Hospitallers, wearing black robes embroidered with blue crosses, travelled widely across medieval Europe, ringing little bells to attract alms, and the hospitals they thus funded became pilgrimage centres for sufferers from ergotism.6 The Antonite monks were credited with many cures, and thus Anthony's name and life story became attached to the disease. What were said to be the saint's bones were sprinkled with holy water or wine, which was then drunk by the afflicted; however it seems more likely that cures were related to the Hospitallers providing a diet free from contaminated grain. Amputated limbs were frequently left at the sites of shrines to St Anthony as offerings of thanks and evidence of the saint's success

Read more in Lancet. 2002 May 18;359(9319):1768-70.St Anthony's fire and living ligatures: a short history of ergometrine.
De Costa C.

Wiki tells me that erysepelas and zoster are also some times called St Anthony's Fire

Image: temptation of St Anthony/ Dali