6.-LAS ORGANIZACIONES DE VOLUNTARIADO Y SU RELACIÓN CON EL ESTADO

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Young girls in white nightgowns, confined to their beds from a strange fever and delirium, began screaming that their bodies were grow-ing bright red flowers. Grown men complained that their heads were no longer made of flesh but lead that had been heated to the melting point, ready to flow over their feather pillows. Children tried to murder their parents with their bare hands. People saw visions of terrible things like skulls that grinned and leered through vacant eye sockets and packs of ravening tigers. In all, 300 people fell victim to a bewildering array of psychotic delusions.

The epidemic might not have been so damaging if people had stayed in their beds, but the mysterious disease made people want to prance about town or jump off buildings as if they were Superman. Some even showed signs of superhuman strength. A handful died, their cardiovas-cular systems destroyed. After several weeks, police finally traced the

disease to bread baked by a shop whose flour had been contaminated by ergot, a fungus that grows on damp grain. Ergot is a storehouse of potent chemicals, and in fact, is the source of the powerful hallucinogen known as LSD.

Ergot poisoning was not new to the area. It ran rampant throughout much of Europe in the cold, damp years from 1250 and 1750,⁴⁸ causing much death and disease among poor people who ate mostly rye bread.

Historians have also blamed it for the weird behavior that led many to be ac-cused of witchcraft and werewolfism during the medieval witch trials. But this French nightmare in 1951 showed that modern people are not immune from the illness so terrible it was once called “St. Anthony’s Fire.”

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As an explanation for sightings of upright, hairy creatures or fi erce wolves with ferocious appetites for human fl esh, however, lycanthropy and therianthropy fall short for the same reasons as do feral children and folks with hypertrichosis. The affl icted people are still people, and always recognized as such. It’s just very hard to mistake any hu-man for a wolf.

There is another route to believing one’s self to have turned into a wolf or other predator without actually sprouting fuzz. Around the

Ergot Mania!

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Young girls in white nightgowns, confi ned to their beds from a strange fever and delirium, began screaming that their bodies were grow-ing bright red fl owers. Grown men complained that their heads were no longer made of fl esh but lead that had been heated to the melting point, ready to fl ow over their feather pillows. Children tried to murder their parents with their bare hands. People saw visions of terrible things like skulls that grinned and leered through vacant eye sockets and packs of ravening tigers. In all, 300 people fell victim to a bewildering array of psychotic delusions.

The epidemic might not have been so damaging if people had stayed in their beds, but the mysterious disease made people want to prance about town or jump off buildings as if they were Superman. Some even showed signs of superhuman strength. A handful died, their cardiovas-cular systems destroyed. After several weeks, police fi nally traced the

disease to bread baked by a shop whose fl our had been contaminated by ergot, a fungus that grows on damp grain. Ergot is a storehouse of potent chemicals, and in fact, is the source of the powerful hallucinogen known as LSD.

Ergot poisoning was not new to the area. It ran rampant throughout much of Europe in the cold, damp years from 1250 and 1750,⁴⁸ causing much death and disease among poor people who ate mostly rye bread.

Historians have also blamed it for the weird behavior that led many to be ac-cused of witchcraft and werewolfi sm during the medieval witch trials. But this French nightmare in 1951 showed that modern people are not immune from the illness so terrible it was once called “St. Anthony’s Fire.”

Figure 5.3 The ergot fungus grows on grain and is a power-ful hallucinogen. When eaten by humans it can cause symptoms that resemble the characteristics of a werewolf. (Linda S. Godfrey)

Will the real Werewolf Please stand Up?  55

world, highly trained shamans or tribal spiritual practitioners have claimed that the “inner predator” may be experienced by ingesting certain drugs, mushrooms, or other hallucinogenic substances that can induce trance states. These substances are often dangerous to physical and/or mental health, but subjects claim their experiences feel very real. There is also a substance called ergot, which is a fungus found on rotting cereals such as rye, that may be eaten accidentally, often with disastrous results (see sidebar).

In sixteenth-century Europe, one book of alchemy and magic, Magiae Naturalis (Natural Magic) by Giambattista della Porta, gave instructions on which herbs to use in order to bring on hallucinations of shape-shifting power. The potion started with a cup of wine, into which was mixed such dangerous substances as belladonna, or deadly nightshade, mandrake, and henbane. Some very toxic ingredients were also combined to make the “magical salves” that many medieval would-be werewolves applied to their bodies to make themselves transform.

Hemlock, bat’s blood, and soot were just a few.⁴⁹

In short, if this were a TV game show and we asked the real were-wolf—feral child, lycanthrope, hairy guy, or ergot eater—to stand up, none of them would be able to truthfully rise. For most of them, any alleged werewolfism exists mostly in their heads—or in the case of the Ramos-Gomez brothers, in their epidermis. While there may have been cases where impressionable people have mistaken people with hypertrichosis or ergot convulsions for werewolves, these conditions could only account for a very small fraction of sightings worldwide.

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