Morbid Mondays - Episode 24 - St. Antony's Fire

Are you a French peasant in the mid 900's? Would you like not to be? Here, eat of this questionable loaf! Today, Katy teaches Brian about St. Antony, his fire and ergot poisoning. Yum Yum!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Greetings.

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Hello.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to or welcome back to Morbid Mondays, your unhinged source unhinged source. God, I'm stuttering. For what the fuck moments throughout history. We will be taking turns giving you a weekly tour of all of the gross, gory, and downright odd moments in history. We are your hosts.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

I'm Katie.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

And I'm Brian. And now let's get into it. So you you have you've kind of told me what today's story. We just talked for like three hours.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

I know about fucking like everything and anything. Like we tried to start this podcast like four times already. Like, I think what, 45 minutes ago, you said, I'm gonna hit this button and we're gonna do this. And then we like launched into stories about high school.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Yeah, and just stuff that you guys don't get to hear about.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Ever. Ever.

unknown 0:52

Ever.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

So, okay, now that like I'm gonna sit here and pretend like we just walked in and sat down and like we're getting on task instead of having spoken about anything, everything, and nothing for three hours. Fucking Monday, Katie and Brian just lock themselves in a room and talk. So today's topic. I guess I should start with like trigger warnings and stuff. Uh well, general body gore. Not like gooey gross, like dry gross.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Okay. And then only mix Mummies gross?

SPEAKER_03 1:27

A little, a little bit. A little bit. Dry gross, yeah. A little bit of religious trauma, general lack of like medical knowledge. I think that's really it.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Okay. So we're like, we're in the medieval type.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

You are exactly correct. We are in the middle ages. Nine four nine pastor stuttered to me. Rude.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Yep. I that's what I do.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Year of our lord, 994. Fuck.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Oh, damn. We're in like the real medieval, the actual medieval times, not like that fucking everybody always goes, you know, the 1400s. I'm like, that's not the Renaissance.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

That's Renaissance. Thank you. Thank you for knowing that. I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

But John has pounded that into our head about sword sword stuff.

SPEAKER_03 2:08

Well, he would know.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah, that's like his whole thing, man.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

I am happy and confident to have a historical conversation with John.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah, he he's he has enlightened me on a great deal of time and place from the medieval to the Russian.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

Isn't that fun? Like learning something you didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

I fucking love that shit. Like, dude, correct me, please. If I'm wrong, correct me.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Shout out to you, John. I don't know if he I know Ashley sometimes listens.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

Oh, hi Ashley.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

But uh um, yeah, all the all the legal stuff, is especially really, really changed the way I look at like why people fought and how they fight and like things that have happened in history. But so so we've got that's our that's our trigger warnings.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Yeah, that's that's really it. Like this the this is while morbid, it's not really gross. That's good. I guess I should say like it like it does have its moments, like it has, but it's not like you know?

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Let me just let me just speak an onomonopeia real quick. You get it, right? Yeah, you get it. All right, so when I say the word Saint Anthony's fire to you, what what is what does that conjure in your mind?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

So I I know like nothing about this. I have heard it typically when people say fire around a saint, sometimes it has to do with their actual like a more like a holy fire? Yeah, religious fervor. Okay, instead of actual fire.

SPEAKER_03 3:32

I get that.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:33

Um, so so you're not like me who read that and went, huh? Isn't that a band? No, no, bitch, that's St. Elmo's fire.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

That was a show too, the uh in the 80s, right?

SPEAKER_03 3:44

I believe so. I think I th that there was music, I don't know. So, in an overarching several month-long research binge on the black plague, because my god, I'm going to correct my original episode of Morbid Mondays. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. My black plague is your syphilis. Um, we'll get there eventually.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

I hope this is the first episode. Someone listen. I do not have syphilis for the record.

SPEAKER_03 4:17

I mean, and even if you did, that's a quick shot of penicillin and you're done.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Problem solved. There's this this topic. Okay, I I know that my partner informed you that I was complaining about it for a week because I was. Because I went I went into this topic going, St. St. Anthony's Fire. I don't understand. What is that? And then it turns out that St. Anthony's Fire is categorized as three separate illnesses. So St. Anthony's Fire, because when I googled it and I said, What the fuck is St. Anthony's Fire? What is this? And then it kept shooting me eight different directions all at once. And then like four of those were all about St. Anthony himself.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

And I was like, okay, cool. What's St. Anthony's Fire? What is that? I'm over here like DBZ.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Yeah, you had a Genu Force pose going on.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

For like a hot second, I got stuck there. So what I found digging around after finally, finally getting a little breakthrough on this, because lots of people like to talk about St. Anthony's Fire, but they don't like to talk about what it is or what it possibly could have been in a historical context. Um, I did find a medical journal that speculated that given the recorded symptoms of St. Anthony's fire, that in various locations that we are we are um kind of concentrating ourselves in France right now because that was a myriad of outbreaks of St. Anthony's fire. But however, each each incident seems to be kind of quantified by different uh symptoms. Three three speculated illnesses, diseases that it it was it likely was. One of them was shingles. Okay which which tracks, right? Because you know, when you think when you think St. Anthony's Fire had, you know, just taking like context clues from the words themselves, you you St. Anthony's Fire, that fire, fever, irritation.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah, and like burns.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

And burns, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah, which which shingles definitely looks like like scabbing of it.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

Yeah, shingles shingles looks like like irritation, rashes, uh, it burns, it hurts. So okay, I get that. I can kind of understand that.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Quick, quick break. Get there was a shot for shingles.

SPEAKER_03 6:38

Yes, get your get your shingles shingles vaccination. It's it's so cheap and it's so worth it. And I'm I'm talking to our entire audience when I say that 99% of you already carry the virus to have shingles, it just needs the opportunity for your immune system to drop for you to contract shingles. So get your shingles vaccination. All right, that was my PSA. That was my good deed for the year. I'm done. Um, and the other one is a um a topical form of strep.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

Which I I understand that I I know in theory that strep can hit you anywhere. I know most of us are very familiar with strep throat.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:22

But like some forms of acne are um either strep or staph infection. And then there's the one that we're talking about today, because I had to dig to find this bitch. And I need you to understand how irritated I was. Because this has apparently happened so many times throughout history that when you just type in St. Anthony's Fire and then give the uh the keyword here, it's gonna pop up fucking everywhere. And it made me so angry. But anyway, the type of St. Anthony's Fire that we're talking about, the holy fire, the burning, is ergotism. Holy shit.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Okay, I do know what this is.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

Yes, you do. I knew I knew you'd get it as soon as I said it, which is why I put it off for so long.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

This is like the most fascinating illness that you can get to me.

SPEAKER_03 8:08

I've actually already kind of done a morbid Monday on on this.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Um Yeah, the the you did a one on the dancing sickness. You are dancing. It hit America in in the early like 1800s, I think. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

And and it also hit uh the English countryside in 16 something, and everybody was like, What the fuck is wrong with these people? I don't know, play music.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

To this day, sometimes uh, because I I don't want to like ruin the episode, but I'll talk about it. No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 8:38

We this is totally a collaborative episode. Let's let's do it. I because I figured you would know what it was as soon as I said it.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

So to this day, I hear people that like on the internet forums they're like, what drugs can you do that are still legal? And sometimes people talk about the hallucinations and other symptoms of ergot as like a drug you can do. And every time I hear that, I'm like, no, no, don't do that.

SPEAKER_03 9:02

Yeah, it was like if if you I okay, I cannot think of a legal way to say this, but it would be a shame if someone ergot is where we got LSD.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

That makes sense, but see, that's like so don't do that. Yeah, just do LSD.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

Oh, that's what I was trying to avoid saying.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Well, I mean, like, given the two options, something that could be potentially lethal, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

It's like or or the refined offshoot version of it.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

That's just only made to just make you trip fucking balls.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah. My God. Or the other one is uh morning glories. Yes. People do like, well, if you take the seeds and you make the tea, and like then you will vomit for three hours. Just fucking do drugs.

SPEAKER_03 9:50

Just but like, don't do drugs. Yeah, don't don't do the illegal ones.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Yeah. Also, just the because this is my like PSA about drugs. Wait till you're 18.

SPEAKER_03 10:01

Actually, I'm gonna I'm gonna add a caveat to that. Don't don't wait till you're 25.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Yeah, so your brain will develop.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Yes. Wait till you wait till you're if you're if you want to experiment anyway.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Yeah, it's like we sound like this opener got weird. We sound like such fucking old people. Don't no, no, no, no. But also, like, just in general, like there are safe ways to experiment with things, right? Yeah. Have a babysitter, make sure that you have a medical screening. Because like pot. Yeah, pot perfectly safe for most people for most people.

SPEAKER_03 10:30

However, if you are like part of that 0.05%, okay, so we're in France in the year, the French year of our Lord 994.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Oh, yeah. Um, oh uh, yeah. Uh well. Do you know? Do you know? Do you know? No, I'm trying to think of what they were what they were at the time. Because it would have been um were they still a part of the Francs? Were they still Holy Roman Empire? Yeah, nice. Okay, cool. Yeah, this is good job. So we are we are conquerors.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

Specifically, at the beginning of the uh the the Capation dynasty, King Hugh has just taken the throne because the previous king had no heir. Tragic.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

For all the fucking these people they know that happens a lot. I know like look at fucking Victoria's kids, all the kids in the world, one survivor. Like, dude. Everybody else is impudent or dead.

SPEAKER_03 11:24

Like, dude, I listen. We're we are eventually gonna do a collaborative episode on the uh the Habsburgs and how that dynasty ended.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:34

With a whimper. They had some pretty great personalities.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Which is wild for looking like horrendous. I mean, good the jaw.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

Uh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

They looked like a different kind of human being, but some of them weren't half bad.

SPEAKER_03 11:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

It's very simple.

SPEAKER_03 11:51

A few of them were like, I'd have lunch with you.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Yeah, for four kings. I can't watch you eat, but I'll have lunch with you.

unknown 11:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

Anyway. So seven years into King Hugh's rule, this bizarre catastrophe struck his countryside. When I tell you it was fucking weird. So I know that you are familiar with ergotism.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:15

Um, I don't know if our listeners. So, ergotism, ergot itself, is a fungus that grows on wheat, but it really, really, really prefers rye. Rye was a staple grain for the the general populace of most places. Because it grew fucking anywhere, in any conditions. I know that we joke about dandelions popping up in the middle of cement con like parking lots. Rye would do the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yeah, rye will grow in English winters.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Yes. And and like not just survive it. No, no, grow. And ergot loves rye. Now, what ergot is is a is a kind of a black bulbous fungus that will invade a a kernel of rye. Because rye looks a lot like wheat, like just looking at it. Like, if you unless you know the difference.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Dark brown bread that you see like medieval peasants eating is rye bread.

SPEAKER_03 13:13

Yeah, the thing that we pay like nine dollars a loaf for now because it's delicious. Uh used to be the food of the peasantry. But so it it is a fungus, and it is a pretty gnarly fungus, because like I said earlier, that's that's ergot is where we got LSD from. Did you know that did you know that the US military tried to aerosolize LSD? Did you know that? Because I didn't know that previous to this.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

We need to do a whole episode on CIA and FBI experiments with LSD.

SPEAKER_03 13:40

Yes, please. I would fucking love that because I read some of it while I was doing this because I was like, where am I gonna put this? Because ergot seems to pop up fucking everywhere. Once again, to quote Ian Malcolm, you were so concerned on if you could do it. You didn't stop to ask if you should. So what ergot is, is once ingested, it is a vasoconstrictor. So basically it attacks your blood vessels.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Okay. Now I'm starting to see why people would like dance. Because you have to move to get the aches out.

SPEAKER_03 14:09

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

It's like restless leg. Yeah. But like, well, not like restless leg at all.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

It's like the ultimate form of restless leg.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Yeah, because you're your your legs would be going numb.

SPEAKER_03 14:18

This isn't even my final form.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Yeah. Yeah, less of a nervous tingle and more of a your the blood is constricted, and so you have to move to get it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

Having having ergot in your grain is not good. And in times of plenty, um, I'm sure that you guys have all seen in the movies, you know, the the the peasants in the field, like, you know, what is this motion?

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Uh they are they are separating the uh chaff.

SPEAKER_03 14:47

Chaff from the wheat. There we go.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Yeah. Uh so you borrow a biblical reference.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

So you you we we have all seen those images of people in the field, like, you know, flipping grain and watching the little dust float away from it, and then like they're picking through the basket, and it looks like it looks like they're pulling rocks out of it. They're pulling ergot out of it.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Holy shit, really. Okay. Because they're big and bulbous.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

So to to the quote that I found was visually, I'm quoting myself here, visually, ergot is dark and bulbous and usually curved. Quotes like a rooster's claw.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Neat.

SPEAKER_03 15:23

Right? So it's very visual. Oh, that's fungus.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah, like almost like like like how cordyceps fungus looks. Yeah. It has that kind of like, yeah, antenna look to it.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

Yeah, it it I looked it up because look, I I did a lot of Google image search while I was doing this, and there is some shit that I can't unsee in my brain now. Uh, I'm not really bothered by it. Once again, grew up medical. I'm kind of used to some of this stuff. I I know what ergot looks like now, and I understand how they could easily like pluck the ergot out. But during this particular time, like this year, this this little sliver of when I decided we're gonna look into ergotism because it's everywhere all the time. Oh my god. It's so common. I thought it was just like a couple of weird instances, and that's how it got the fantastical name. No, no. No, no, no, no, no. We have a case of St. Anthony's fire as recent as 1951.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Whoa.

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Right?

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Well, that so that makes sense because it's not like the fungus is gonna go away.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

Well, no, it doesn't. It's a we the farmers still have to deal with it now.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Yeah. I've heard of people using like very specific uh herbicides to deal with ergot fungus specifically.

SPEAKER_03 16:32

So here's the thing: you can't kill ergot with heat.

unknown 16:36

Whoa.

SPEAKER_03 16:37

You cannot because of the alkaloids in it. Now, for anybody else who doesn't know what an alkaloid is because I didn't, I was like, what the fuck's an alkaloid? I know what a vocaloid is.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

It's poison. Yeah, like it's it's the it's it's a chemical compound. Yeah, it's the chemicals that did nicotine, yeah, caffeine, morphine, all alkaloids.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

So ergot itself is not only heat resistant, like the fungus, but also the alkaloids within it are not only heat resistant, but they are kind of like concentrated by heat. Because my brain went, okay, cool. So you have a fungus in your wheat that in in times of plenty you would normally pluck out, throw away, and move on with your day, and you don't get and you don't get a contaminated grain supply. But this is not a time of plenty in this particular era of France. This is this is a time of of almost flooding. Like it is unusually cold, it is raining all the time, there is no sun. Like it is, it is dark and dreary and wet.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

So the wheat is rotting.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

So the wheat itself is rotting.

unknown 17:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

But the rye, rock star that it is, is fine. However, it has some friends growing on it now. And there is there is not enough supplementary anything for them to waste any of these kernels. So, like, these these these farmers, the gatherers, the millers, the bakers, all of these people are are like looking at these erga, these these black kernels that are shaped kind of like a rooster's claw.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah. So they're they're not starving. So they're like, well, how can we eat this?

SPEAKER_03 18:12

They're they're yeah, and so the kind of general consensus is that everybody thought fire purifies, nothing survives fire.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Unfortunately, no.

SPEAKER_03 18:21

You are in fact wrong, my friends, and I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah. So some of the worst poisons that you get from plants, well, arsenic and cyanide, don't arsenic specifically, doesn't really go away. Yeah. Crush it, you can burn it, all that stuff. It's an element, it doesn't want to move.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

Well, as it turns out, so is ergot, because I thought the same thing. Like, how is it surviving not only the milling process but the baking process? Well, now we know.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Right. It's not it's not the fungus attacking you, it's what it creates that's attacking you.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

It is, in fact, the alkaline.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Damn.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Yeah, it's gnarly.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

So if you yeah, so if you grind it up into like flour, it's just how inundated.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

Everything, exactly. So because of the not only weather conditions at the time, like everything, there's just not enough of anything. They don't take the usual, like this one looks funny, throw it away, precautions. They just mill it all up together. Because what you gonna do? And imagine for a moment you don't know. Okay? We we do not have the knowledge that we have now. You are simply trying to feed your village and your family, and you have just contaminated the entire countryside's supply of life-sustaining bread.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

For like the next year, because now it's all it's in the millstones. It's in every yeah, it's gonna keep getting into stuff.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

The very bread that would be on the table of the poorest family has all come from the same supply, and every bit of it is contaminated with a fungus that is gonna make you trip fucking balls.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

What a party.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

No!

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Yeah, no, because this is not like a good high either. It's it's a you're poisoned high. It's like it's yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:15

So, okay, vasoconstrictors. I I'm I'm sure you can break the etymology of the word apart.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

It is a vascular constrictor. It basically goes to your blood vessels and makes them very small.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

So all of the oxygen in your blood cannot get to all of the places it needs to go. And I I I'm not sure how how aware you are of how your body's defensive systems work. So when your body is like, oh God, I can't fucking fix it. Save the shit. We need to survive.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Oof. Yeah, like, yeah. And so it's what hypothetically in hypothermia is.

SPEAKER_03 20:51

Literally about to bring that up. They tell you when you when you are when you are slightly hypothermic to rub your chest. And that is that is A to like help warm up, you know, vital circulatory systems. But it also, like, in helping warm those, keeps your body out of the everything else can go, keep the heart and the lungs going.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Yeah, don't don't cut off all blood flow, say one of your hands, because it wants to save the arm. We're probably getting a lot of this wrong. That's what's crazy. Somebody's gonna listen to this that's like a current doctor, and they're like, well, no, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

I am a dark history researcher.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Yeah, right. We can get shit wrong.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

Who has a couple of medical friends and like my dad that I can call.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Um But I think, yeah, this this is this this is the case with Ergot, huh? Yes, does it cause like uh finger and limb loss?

SPEAKER_03 21:44

You are correct. There are two different versions of Urgot. There is the chronic version, and I didn't write down the other one because I'm a terrible researcher. Uh there uh God Well, the other one has more to do with seizures, and that's usually where it stops because usually In the other version that's not chronic, the exposure to ergot ergot uh has stopped. But in chronic ergotism, it can continue going until you start getting the real extreme symptoms. Um so extreme symptoms of ergotism include seizures, numbness in extremities, uh mania and psychosis, tripping balls, yeah, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. Oh, and the one that we were just talking about, gangrene.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Yeah, because all the blood flow has been shut down.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

Your bits will fall off. But it's but it's not the nasty gangrene, and this is this is part of the image search that's like now and it lives in my head. Yeah. It's dry gangrene.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Sure.

unknown 22:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Which I have seen in real life.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Because you're not infected, it's that you're becoming necrotic, and that's something else sets in.

SPEAKER_03 22:53

Basically, so no, not even that. It's in in in the cases of ergotism, in in the chronic ergotism, where we're like they named it it it garnered the name Saint Anthony's fire, specifically because the early symptoms include the feeling like like the pins and needles, the numbing, because that's your your vessels constricting and your blood through blood flow is beginning to to slow, to decrease.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Yeah, it's the your hand is in icy cold freezing water feeling.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

It's it you you you know, the feeling of pins and needles, like right as your hand is starting to wake up and everything just kind of feels like TV static.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

Holy fire.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Yikes.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

Um but it was it was compounded to such a degree, like, and I think part of the reason that they gave it the name, St. Anthony's Fire, is because like the the your patient at the time would would complain of the feeling of an a limb burning. And then a couple of days later you would begin to see lesions or um injuries that that would look like burns. Uh, and I I I can confirm this because I looked up, you know, what is the process of gangrene? And it it very much looks like little burns that slowly begin to spread. And it kind of it looks it looks almost like a spider bite. Have you seen it? Have you seen a spider bite that's gone a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Have had them many times.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

So so you know how that red ring spreads and then the center goes dark and then it looks like it's beginning to like heal and peel.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:24

And then usually that bursts and it it, you know, it does its little draining thing and then it begins to heal.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

But this is gonna look more like a person who has, say, like a staph infection, just like diabetic.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Where it's just not healing and it's just pitting out.

SPEAKER_03 24:39

It is in fact pitting out and it's getting darker and drying up. And because there's no blood flow in the limb, the limb is literally like dehydrating.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yikes. Oh, yeah, sure. Like, like as weird of a thing it is as this may be, but like, yeah, like if you've ever like um, well, if you've ever like banded a cow.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

Oh yeah, yeah, exactly that.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Yeah, it kind of just dries up and falls off.

SPEAKER_03 25:04

Yeah, like we we are from Texas, my friend.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Yikes, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:10

Cause uh we just did that. That is that is a very specific Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Somebody up there's what do you mean band? I mean castrate is what I mean.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

Yeah, they don't they don't cut it off, they put it, they put like really tight rubber bands on it, and then it just kind of boop dries up and falls off.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Bit like an umbilical cord. There we go.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

That's a much better nicer mental embryo.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

There we go. We should have done that in the first place. Anyway, so in in in 994, the weather is shit. There is there is no wheat that's really survived, so now rye is a rock star. Unfortunately, the rye is contaminated. And now that contaminated rye is on every single table in the area. It every table that that mill has sold flour to.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Which is every area. Yeah, like it's gonna be like for the whole I don't know what the French version of counties is, but yeah, the whole whoever whoever goes to that mill, which may be like five or six small towns.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

And it begins slow. Like it's like you you don't just you know eat your bite of bread and a few hours later you're tripping off to Neverland. No, no. Unfortunately, this ergot hits more like food poisoning at first.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 26:20

So I'm t we're talking nausea, headaches, diarrhea, um, a general kind of like lack of energy.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Yeah, as as you as your body can fight it at first in small amounts, or maybe it keeps you from absorbing other nutrients.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

And then it continues because this bread is with every single meal. Sometimes it is your meal.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Yeah. That was a pretty common diet for a lot of people for a very long time. Is cheese, bread, beer.

SPEAKER_03 26:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

So, you know, you're you're having stomach problems and it's pretty standard, like, oh, I ate something off. Oh no, I'm gonna be sick for a couple of days. But uh I feel gross. But then it keeps going. And prolonged exposure to ergot gets significantly worse. As we discussed, uh, I I gave you some of the uh highlights of the symptoms. Yeah. Not to make it sound like a party or anything, but uh it's definitely not. So prolonged exposure like gets a little more um unpleasant. We we talked about the burning burning sensation in the limbs because that's you know, that said limb losing feeling. And I imagine that to these people at the time, it probably because they're we're in the we're in the dead of winter, it's cold. And I don't know how many of you have worked outside when it is like biting cold, but there's a certain like there's a certain point where that cold kind of turns to heat, but it's not like I'm warming up heat, it's oh god. Uh uh when you're when your hands or your feet are really cold and you get in a hot shower. Yeah, it is that that incandescent moment of ah and then you have to like lean, you know, slowly work your way back in. It was a really specific reference. Anyway, so burning pain in the skin or the feeling of like insects crawling pins and needles, basically, is what they're describing. Uh, and then hallucinations.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Yeah, because we've stepped up from mania and a little bit of psychosis to just full-blown hallucinations.

SPEAKER_03 28:41

Full-blown hallucinations. Um, and temporary blindness. That's one that I didn't know, but makes perfect sense. Along with that burning sensation because your limbs are losing their blood supply. You're gonna get sores, and um difficulty speaking, and apparently tinnitus.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Right?

SPEAKER_01 29:01

I I didn't get that one either, but yeah, because that I guess it's restricting blood. I mean it's restricting blood everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 29:07

Yeah. I want to mention, because I I I know I said this earlier that ergotism pops up a lot. Like it's it's fucking all over history, and all of these symptoms line up. And there is, I read a couple of different papers, which, yay me, I read papers. Yeah, like published papers.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Sometimes I mean half of my stuff is literally just like I found a history book on it. Yeah. Made notes from that history book.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

But there are a couple of pe a couple of different paper papers that speculate that ergotism may have been one of the causes for the Salem witch trials.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Dude. Yeah. Right. I can I can I can see it because anytime something that happens in in the because this is unfortunately, this is not the ancient world. The Salem witch trials are really not That was like 300 years ago. Yeah, so but but it's anytime you're in an environment where like you don't have science, so something crazy happens, and then you're just like, How do we explain this? What's happened? Typically speaking, the answer for most cultures when some crazy shit happens is either yeah, demons, witches, god's mad at you. Yeah, it's like one of those three things. It's very rarely ever just outside of like Rome. Yeah, like a lot of Roman records are just kind of like Vesuvius exploded. You know, like and it's which is really refreshing.

SPEAKER_03 30:29

Vulcan was so angry at us.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Yeah, it's it's like sometimes you get like, you know, like like, oh, it must have been, you know, the gods or or or or some or Typhon is breaking from his prison or something, but like most records are just like, and the volcano exploded and people died. Yeah, and it's super refreshing, especially in the time period that it happened, because everything else is dude. My favorite thing from them is that there was a general that just went around disproving myths. Yes, his whole career was like, I'm gonna go to Africa because they said that's maybe where the gods come from. So I'll start in Ethiopia and try to go into Sedan. Can't go very far into there, this is a big ass swamp. But that's what's there, a big ass swamp. There's a desert and then there's a big ass swamp.

SPEAKER_03 31:16

And it just keeps going.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Yeah, like in in uh it that whole thing is like he wrote at the end of his at the end of his career, it's like I've tracked down everything that people said. Maybe this is the the lands beyond and where the gods live, or the or from our myths where these other people came from. He's like, there was never another people, there's never a god there, that's just more humans. It's just more us.

SPEAKER_03 31:37

Yeah, like that's just a different neighborhood. All right, so anyway, I thought that was interesting and like plausible.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Because like some of the symptoms fit, especially with the uh with what the girls reported. Now, granted, take that with a grain of salt.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Yeah, because hysteria is hysteria. Yeah, hysteria can also do almost everything that you just listed of just like phantom. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:02

But you know, you can't really prove that. Anyway, moving on. So, yeah. Repeated exposure to ergot uh basically makes all of these symptoms absolutely worse. And when I tell you that some of the reports from this particular period, like there, there are a couple where people like literally degenerating into straight-up madness, which hallucinations right.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

If you if you're just if it's building from like mania to to to some slight, you know, audio sensory issues, and then you get like full-on hallucinations, keep eating it for a year. Yeah, your brain's gonna break. You know, like this is also true of LSD. If you do LSD all the time, like yeah, like you sh dude, it's some of them were some of them were crazy.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

Like one guy was literally like screaming to the church that he could hear the voice of God.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Fuck, you probably could.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

I honestly he may have been high enough.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah, him and Jimi Hendrix.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

But so you have people that are literally going crazy, like previously perfectly sane, normal people going crazy. You have other people who who like a weaver who who's losing feeling in their fingers. And this happens in a matter of days, mind you.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Like, because repeated exposure to ergot builds up and it goes pretty quick. Like, because you have you have millions of little offshoot blood vessels.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

And some of them are extremely tiny. So I I've seen what happens when a fingertip loses loses blood flow. Cause it happened to my mom, of all people.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

I've seen dry gangr got dry gangrene in real life.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

Yeah, and it can happen to like people with like Reynolds syndrome, right? Where they got like necrotic flesh on their their the ends of their ears or their fingertips.

SPEAKER_03 34:04

Yeah. Like there's no agony to it.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Because you literally can't feel it.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

You can't feel it. Like they they they complained of a burning sensation, and then they're literally like their fingers are black, and they can't feel them. In desperation, the the general peasantry was like, church help.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Yeah, because you don't know what's causing this. You just know that everybody's like fucking toes and fingers are turning.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

Yeah, and like there's people that are crazy now, and it's it's just it's wild. And the church, they eventually like a delegation gets to the church and the church steps in. Enter the Order of St. Anthony. Saint Anthony himself was was known as the doctor of the church. He was a healer.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

That makes sense. I was trying to figure out because I don't know the saint stories, right?

SPEAKER_03 34:52

So I'm like, Well, I didn't know his until I read it.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

So what's what's going on here?

SPEAKER_03 34:56

So Saint Anthony was was known for being a healer. Like this this guy like sold everything he ever had, like, and he was already kind of a priestly dude, so he didn't have much, and fucked off into the desert.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Like you do.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

As one does.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Yeah. If you're like, it does seem like isolation is is key to self-discovery.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

It's very monastic.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:18

Which oh, I get it now.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

But anyway, he was he was known for helping people and healing them. And a lot of his I I looked into it and it's speculated that a lot of his healing things was like pig fat salves.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Yeah, okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:33

I don't necessarily know how effective that was. But anyway.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Not for this, but for many things, like small skin infections and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 35:40

Uh, so yeah. It's also pour the wine on it.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Old soap was made with fat.

SPEAKER_03 35:44

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But uh St. Anthony's St. Anthony, the Order of St. Anthony, and let me put let me put it that way, steps in and is like, whoa, this is some freaky shit. Come stay with us. We'll see if we can help you. And lo and fucking behold, if the people that don't stay with the order of St. Anthony get better.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

God damn it.

SPEAKER_03 36:04

What?

SPEAKER_01 36:05

That sucks. What is happening here? Hold on, hold up. Calling it Saint Anthony's fire is just the basic, like, hey, you remember when? Yeah. That was really dumb, and this this order just killed a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 36:18

Uh, they got better. And it is largely speculated because the the the I tried to call it a temple, the church, the church's grain supply hadn't been infected with ergot. So basically, they just removed the contaminant, and these people started to get better. Now I'm sure the people that like, you know, were deep in the gangrene section of it probably lost the hands.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Yeah, sure. I misunderstood you entirely. People who went to the monastery to get treated got better. Yes. Okay. I I I heard it the other way around. And I was like, that's so funny.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

Oh, oh, the Order of St. Anthony just came in and just obliterated everyone.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

And then like every time You are corrupted in the name of the Emperor. Just the shame of St. Anthony is like everybody keeps getting sick, so they just know you by it. No, but but they got better because, like you said, they had clean grain. Yeah. Um, probably like, well, from a better time because it's to store grain.

SPEAKER_03 37:14

Yeah, and churches largely were in charge of everything everywhere all the time.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:20

So I it's it's just it's wild to me that nobody connected the knots.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

You know what is probably a thing that like saved that? So if you're if you're like a peasant in in medieval France, right? You're you're Frankish peasant and and new king and all that stuff, and you make a a religious tithe to the church, right? And you're a little farmer, and so for that, for you that means food, right? That isn't you're not like giving gold, or you might be giving like a giving fabric. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:51

Like you've woven some fabric to give to them.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

Yeah, it's just a little bit of like, and sometimes for smaller little churches, this is just a community effort. Yeah. You know, like somebody whittles candlesticks or something like that and gives it. But you don't give your shitty food to the church.

SPEAKER_03 38:09

No, you don't give the questionable grain.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Right, because this is a religious thing for you. So they're only getting good high-quality grain.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

That's fucking crazy, right? Saved by your own ties.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Saved by your own ties. Yeah. Holy shit.

SPEAKER_03 38:26

I love I love how dramatic I was writing this. Terror reigned as family, family pets turned into monsters and shadows became demons, and empty furniture began to talk back. I'm over here trying to script myself and then just completely scrapped the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

I I'm I'm oddly starting to really like identify with medieval peasants in France. I too went to college.

SPEAKER_03 38:52

We're so poor.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Yeah. Like, holy shit. Do an LSD watching something funny that suddenly turns not funny at all.

SPEAKER_03 39:03

Dude, can you imagine being the one schmuck that's like, I hear God?

SPEAKER_01 39:07

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_03 39:08

And my fingers are falling off.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Yeah, because that's a night, that's a nightmare.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Dude, and one of the things, one of the things that I was reading is that when uh when some of some of the uh some of the churches, because I I presume that there was a bit of a travel to go to the Order of St. Anthony, because that's very specific.

SPEAKER_02 39:24

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03 39:25

So I imagine that they probably went to like, you know, a nearby church, but they I was reading that these churches would tell them to fuck off because they deserved to suffer for their sins.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Yeah, because they thought it was like, yeah, go go do the penitence thing. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

My hands are falling off. I am burning from within from a spiritual fire. Please help me. So listen, bro, I got some holy water and that's it.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

So St. Anthony in in this in this case, the the order of St. Anthony is different.

SPEAKER_03 40:00

St. And St. Anthony is uh the order of St. Anthony would later actually um be kind kind of kind of a dedicated order for like medical stuff. But at the time, Saint Anthony was known as like, you know, the doctor within the church.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Okay. So So that's why, like, that's why these churches were different.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

He was kind of it his his order was kind of an order of healer and started getting a whole whole lot of praise as people who came there for help with St. Anthony's fire, this mysterious illness that was burning them from within, and they started to get better. Now, we we talked about that. That was probably likely because the grain itself had changed, their exposure to ergotism had ceased.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Uh, the actual order is called the Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony.

SPEAKER_03 40:46

Hey, see, told you the doctors.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

Founded in night in 1095. So we are like we're in the city. After where you're talking about, yeah. That's uh so that's that's kind of cool though. I like that.

SPEAKER_03 41:00

As we discussed, this this contamination within the rye was everywhere. And ergotism, as as we know it, St. Anthony's Fires, they would have known it, or it would have later been called, kind of raged for about a year, and then it just abruptly began to go away.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Yeah, winter hit.

SPEAKER_03 41:19

When we added a new grain supply. Yeah. The weather itself unfucked itself. Like the days warmed up, the sun came back, the rain stopped.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:32

It no, it was no longer an ideal condition for this awful fungus to grow. Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

And yeah, so it just kind of went and it took it took about that long to decontaminate all the mills, all the stored grain, all the all of that stored flour, and Jesus. Oh my god. In a weird way, we've kind of gleamed a bit of like historical information from this. Like, how long would the grain supplies, how long would it take for for a crop of grain to completely exhaust itself in medieval Europe? About a year.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

About a year, yeah. Now granted that's for the area itself. Now, ergot never really goes away. Like I said, we we had a case in France once again. Um, France, are you okay? In 1951, and it's actually super well documented. I started to do this story on that incident, but it was, I don't know, it it was a little too modern for me, so I like hopped backwards. Just a couple hundred years, just a couple.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Yeah, just a couple, all the all the way back to the beginning of the country. Yeah, so what happened? Like, how quick did did that get solved? I mean, because now we're in the scientific era, so like people would have been able to.

SPEAKER_03 42:48

In 19 in 1951, it launched an entire investigation, like a criminal investigation, because it's 1951. Uh, and so they're coming off rations and coming off like the military kind of oversight for milling stuff. But in 1951, there were about 250 people affected with ergotism, 50 of which got thrown in asylums because they went so like cuckoo.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

Yeah, because fuck. What do you do at your little town in France and then 50 people go nuts?

SPEAKER_04 43:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

Like psychiatric issues are a common thing that like police and and ambulances deal with all the time, right?

SPEAKER_04 43:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Usually not that many at one time, and it was quick.

SPEAKER_03 43:35

Yes, like it was fast.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Like, probably talking about the grain from like a single field. Yes. Because 250 is not a lot of people in the modern sense, right?

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Dude, it's so well documented. Um, you can if you if you look up ergotism in 1951, this place is gonna pump up. It's like Saint Point or something like that. Or Saint Dew Point. I read it and I was like super into it, and then I was like, uh, but yeah, there was a criminal and criminal investigation. Launched in this because um at the time there there were grain sort shortages, and uh a lot of the time when you're when your wheat was short, you would supplement with rye.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:10

And uh this guy, the the dude that was in charge of this, I don't know if he was the miller or just the owner or what, but he was saying, no, no, no, I'm not supplementing with rye, I'm supplementing with bean powder, which is weird, but I mean anything can be a filler if you try hard enough. Ask the Victorians, they were putting plaster in their bread to make it whiter. That's a true story.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_03 44:32

But eventually, they after like hours and hours and hours and hours of interrogation after they finally tracked it down, like because they when I say there was an actual investigation, I mean it. Like, and I'm I'm proud of them for doing this because like this was like legit like eliminating factors until they narrowed it down to the bread, what's the common denominator, and then they took apart the elements of the bread and they realized that the water is municipal, the salt is non you can't fuck with salt.

SPEAKER_01 45:00

Right, it's the salt is salt, basically.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

The salt is salt, the sugar is sugar.

SPEAKER_01 45:03

It's not like copper salt or something. Yeah. Because that would have been a thing, right? People freaking out, maybe it's got you know, like the salt is not sodium, right? Like it maybe it's not table salt, it's something else.

SPEAKER_03 45:13

And they narrowed it down to the down to the uh the flour. And then from there, they took it down to the manufacturers and then the millers and then the farmers. Like they went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like, I am impressed with this investigation. And eventually they find out that this dude, like the head honcho of all of this, is not in fact using bean powder as he claimed. He is supplementing with old supplies of rye. Lo and fucking behold, ergotism.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

That just a fucking old supply of rye that's just rotting.

SPEAKER_03 45:44

Yeah. And he took out a whole town. 250 people. Seven people died, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Yeah. Sue, this is a perfect like little microcosm of why sometimes like super non-processed, super organic things aren't always. Yeah, sometimes the shit, the chemicals and stuff that they put in your food are to keep you from you know, like from killing you. Yeah, like they're yeah, yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_03 46:08

Like erg like ergotism.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:10

Beware your bread, bro.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

Really wild, which reminds me, I've got like five bags of bleached flour that probably need to be thrown. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 46:18

You only have two, but like I've been making bread hilariously a lot lately. Um, so yeah, that that was that was my trip into 994 AD France.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

That is so wild.

SPEAKER_03 46:31

Ergotism!

SPEAKER_01 46:32

France also right around this time period, is really going through the fucking ringer.

SPEAKER_04 46:37

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

Yeah, like I'm trying to um, because you know, we talked about this in several other episodes, of course, like you know, 1066 is the conquering of England by William uh the Norman, uh William the Bastard, now William the Conqueror. Um then there's the Viking period.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

Who exploded.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:57

By the way.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

So like the there's all this this kind of not even grandson, I think he was his son. I something one of Rolo's kids.

SPEAKER_03 47:16

Yeah, I think I think he was actually a son.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

And all that don't quote me on that, I'm probably wrong. It's it's either son or grandson. I I remember he had a a direct lineage from the fairly mythical Rolo. But southern France in specific goes through the fucking ringer for like, yeah, for like a couple hundred years. It's kind of like, who's showing up today? Is it the Vikings? Nope, it's an army from Africa. Well, surprise! Fuck. Yeah, like, and you're just like, what?

SPEAKER_03 47:46

Oh, wait, no, now our grain is poisoned by this weird bulbous thing. I don't know what it is. Don't eat it. Oh, we're out of grain. All right, grind it up. Fuck. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

Yep, that's right. Also, uh uh in a little while after this, a couple of years. Oh, it's spring. What a great year this is gonna be. Where's the spring? Where's the summer?

SPEAKER_03 48:10

Oh no, an ice age.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Solid year of winter, yeah. Like, and you're just like, what the fuck? They really go like early Europe. It's so funny when you look at like history books and like, God, why were they like this? I was like, read, read like this 300-year time period right around the turn of the millennium. Yeah, that's why they're like this.

SPEAKER_03 48:29

It's wild. It is it is everything. How did any of these people survive?

SPEAKER_01 48:34

Fuck, dude. Even their like dietary when we think about like them living off of bread constantly, it's most of their meal. This is kind of like a layover from Roman culture, right? Like people were very subsistence. It was it was like what you found in the woods, a la mushrooms, berries, greens, but like truffles are from this area, right? Like they grow in in the ground.

SPEAKER_03 48:59

Well, if the pig eats it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

It must not be that dangerous, but also like uh and now they sell for hundreds of dollars. Yeah. Well, but I mean, before spices really I I say with air quotes because there's this kind of mythos about spices that Europe has no spices. It has spices, it just doesn't have like heat-based spices.

SPEAKER_03 49:18

By the way, did you know that coriander and fucking cilantro are the same plant?

SPEAKER_01 49:24

Yes. I did not, yeah, I learned that last seeds of or leaves of, yeah. A lot of there's a lot of them that are like that, which is really I always wondered why I didn't like coriander.

SPEAKER_03 49:35

Well, same reason I don't like cilantro.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

Yeah. That's wild though. So I I looked up, I just as a side note before we end this uh episode. I I looked up Saint Anthony because I was like, what what are the what's Saint what St. Anthony? What is he known for? 13 miracles.

SPEAKER_03 49:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

Usually you get like the three, right?

SPEAKER_03 49:54

Oh no, this bro was like like on overtime.

SPEAKER_01 49:58

Now I have respect.

SPEAKER_03 49:59

He died when he was like 36, possibly from ergotism, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 50:04

That's wow, that's ironic. It is his fire. So I have to read some of these because some of these are very, very funny. And some of them make perfect sense to our story. Here's one restoration of sight and hearing. He healed the blind, deaf, and mute.

SPEAKER_04 50:20

How?

SPEAKER_01 50:21

Maybe by giving them fucking fresh bread. I don't know.

unknown 50:25

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 50:26

But like just stop eating the black shit.

SPEAKER_01 50:29

Yeah, this is this is like miracle stuff, right? Typical uh stuff is the healings and such. However, I have to read this one.

SPEAKER_04 50:37

Pray go on.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

When people wouldn't listen, Saint Anthony preached to the fish of Remini, which gathered at the shore as if listening. There's a kid in this town that's feeding these fish.

unknown 50:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

That's that's all I'm saying. I've walked up to the dock of a seafood restaurant on a lake. However, and this one, this one's the fucking great. Uh this is this is the best. Because I love I love Saint Stories for this reason. Some of the miracles are always so funny to me because they're like, um this is a miracle to who exactly, right? Um, but some of them are like like, and this person had cancer, and now they don't, and it's a miracle, and so we've attributed it to this person.

SPEAKER_03 51:19

I've got beef with those faith healers that pull out the cancer.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Oh, the yeah, reaching in behind their hand. That's so silly. Uh geez, I mean anyway, moving on.

SPEAKER_03 51:29

The the miracle.

SPEAKER_01 51:30

Yeah, the Eucharist mule.

SPEAKER_03 51:32

Bless you. What?

SPEAKER_01 51:35

The Eucharist mule. You know, we hang it on the Christmas tree every year. Uh no. Uh uh it's a heretic challenged Anthony offering a hungry mu uh offering a hungry mule fodder. If it ignored the food and knelt before the blessed sacrament, the Eucharist was real. If the if the mule did so.

SPEAKER_03 51:58

What? Meaning that so So if this if this mule decided that it just needed a break for a second.

SPEAKER_01 52:04

And then got down like kneeled like mules will do. If you've ever been around like mules, they just kind of get on their knees or whatever you want to call that, right? They just they because they play. Mules play a lot.

SPEAKER_03 52:16

Um boy, our country is showing.

SPEAKER_01 52:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:19

How many people know this?

SPEAKER_01 52:23

You give them balls, they play with balls.

SPEAKER_03 52:25

They will play, it's so funny. And and most of them are all leg.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

Yeah, mules, mules are actually kind of the best. They can be bastards, but they will protect the your other animals with their lives, even.

SPEAKER_03 52:36

Yeah. Um they're so affectionate, too, by the way. So apparently, or at least my grandmother's was.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

Yeah, apparently the the the thing was like a I guess he was debating someone. He said a heretic, so I guess I suppose it's in early Christianity there was a lot more arguments about what was real and what wasn't. Guys like debated each other in letters. That's all literally what half of the New Testament is is Paul debating people with letters. So, like, that's Corinthians, it's Paul's letters to the Corinthians, and then the Corinthians presumably wrote back.

SPEAKER_03 53:11

And then Alexander Hamilton. Sorry. Anyway, I'm so sorry. So the Eucharist.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

Now I need a rapping Paul.

SPEAKER_03 53:25

Excuse me. Excuse me. Lynn, I need you to get on this.

SPEAKER_01 53:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:29

Biblical Broadway.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Biblical Broadway. Uh well, that's Joseph. You know, like there's more than a lot of people.

SPEAKER_04 53:36

Lynn would do it better.

SPEAKER_01 53:37

Yeah. Oh, yeah, undoubtedly. So apparently somebody offered him fodder. Uh they're setting conditions, and if this thing that a mule would not normally do happens, then the Eucharist is real. Does it prove that the Eucharist is real? No. Is it a funny story? Yeah. I like Saint stories, they're fun.

SPEAKER_03 53:59

So some of the some of those saints are stories are fucking wild.

SPEAKER_01 54:02

Yeah. Here's the guy that pushes in the soft spots of babies. That's a real one.

SPEAKER_03 54:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 54:07

Which is very weird. Uh, but but so this there's gotta be uh like a well, I know there is. I know that there's a treatment for ergot now where they treat they treat fields, and we also have uh uh varieties of wheat that are grown that are that are fungus resistant.

SPEAKER_03 54:25

So that hopefully Now I know for a fact that this this family us prefers rye. Because every time we do fancy sandwich, like get together fancy sandwich and games night, the rye bread is fucking gone.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

Oh yeah. Because it tastes like something.

SPEAKER_03 54:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 54:47

White bread tastes like nothing. It tastes like sugar.

SPEAKER_03 54:50

I don't know. I find it deeply amusing that rye was considered a peasant's food because it grew so prevalently that it was worth nothing.

SPEAKER_01 55:00

Well, you know what though, that you've kind of given me context with this episode because I wonder if that's like the reason that that white one of the reasons that white bread may have become like a wealthier food is that not only is it you know finer because it's hard to get, right? Because refining wheat was very hard for a long time. But I wonder if it was just safer.

SPEAKER_03 55:22

Maybe I I'm I'm not really sure. Like I don't I don't know if this one has like a cause and effect situation. Um I do know that like it this the the ergotism didn't really happen in the upper crust because there was less rye being served there.

SPEAKER_01 55:39

Yeah, sure. Um and also like they're uh better stores of it.

SPEAKER_03 55:44

Probably.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Yeah, like better places to store it, and also they're buying like better sifted wheat, and they probably have their own fields which are better tended and I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 55:55

Probably, but like it just it I don't know, an entire countryside goes bonkers in a matter of days.

SPEAKER_01 56:04

Dude, fucking rager at Nurgle's house. Nice, because that's gotta be hundreds of people. Yeah, you know, like I mean, I think about like the the the population scales of medieval Europe were much, much smaller, but at the same time, like it's your whole fucking village.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

Yeah, the well, and this wouldn't have been just one village, it would have been several villages. Like in 1951, it took out one town at 250 people, yeah. So in you know, 900 and Dick, it an entire countryside. Can you imagine being the king getting those reports? And the peasants are crazy. Well, we knew this. No, no, sir. I mean, actually crazy.

SPEAKER_01 56:50

I mean, and they don't want to be, they're asking for help. Like my leash. It's not a it's not a revolt. They're all just screaming and running in circles in a field. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:00

And their limbs are falling off. I mm-W What do you mean their limbs are falling off? I mean they're falling off. OFF off.

SPEAKER_01 57:06

What the fuck? Yeah, especially with the like with the the religious sentiment of the time, which was everything was very real. Yeah. Right? Somebody told you, if you do this, it'll cause a curse on your people. You took that as like like rock. Yeah, like like if I drop this, it will fall to the ground. This is real. I imagine if you are a king in the 900s, if you're anyone in the 900s and you see this, it's like the year without a summer or the the the terror that was the black plague, it surely must feel like a judgment from a wrathful god.

SPEAKER_03 57:43

It is it is listed in all of in all of the everything that I read about this. It was listed as a biblical and apocalyptic plague.

SPEAKER_01 57:51

Like you're gonna go nowhere that doesn't that isn't affected.

SPEAKER_03 57:55

Yeah, because it like ergot is widespread. Like it is, it is not an isolated incident. Like if you type it, if you type in, if you go to Google right the fuck now and type in ergotism throughout history, you're gonna get so many hits. So many. St. Anthony's Fire did not hit once, it hit many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. And it is it is speculated that St. Anthony's Fire was also the cause of the uh the dancing plague as well, which I I as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, I I covered an entire tick uh Morbid Monday TikTok on it.

SPEAKER_01 58:29

Yeah, it's like what what happens if your little like Quaker Village or whatever it was gets like ergotism, but is also much healthier and much better fed and and doesn't eat bread all the time.

SPEAKER_03 58:41

Yeah, that then bread isn't like the main staple of their meal.

SPEAKER_01 58:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:45

So you're a little you're probably not gonna get the chronic version of it. You're gonna get the one that gives you like seizures. Which and what do seizures look like?

SPEAKER_01 58:52

Yeah, which is probably just like putting you in a shock. Like you're you're taking a lot of poison at one time and then just like fucking freaking out. You know, like that's damn, that's really wild. And now I will you mentioned earlier, like our our our collective households really like the rye bread. And I think I knew what you were you were you were thinking about this. Like, we're all gonna be looking at it a scant from now on. Yes, this could kill me, but with butter, it's so good.

SPEAKER_03 59:24

Brian, thank you for getting my sense of humor. I appreciate you so much. So, yeah, that was St. Anthony's fire. I had a time with this one. I enjoyed it once I finally nailed it down to an era because, like I said, it's fucking everywhere all the time. The bread at the store is likely safe.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

Oh, almost certain.

SPEAKER_03 59:47

You're you're fine. I have never once tripped balls after eating a sandwich. We're good guys.

SPEAKER_01 59:56

Unless I wanted to. You've never been to five guys.

SPEAKER_03 59:59

Uh actually, I don't think I have slander on five.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:03

The the joke there for five guys, don't sue us. Uh, I just really like your your burgers.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:09

Like uh and uh nope, that thought is gone.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:14

Oh well.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:14

Oh well, shout out to horses.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:16

Anyway, um blame it on the airgot. You know what's crazy too is that so rye is also what uh for a lot of people is made like when you make beer. Yeah. So for for like decades, there would have been like beer floating around that just you had a chance of getting a little bit of something that does not process out.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:40

Can you imagine okay? So hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Let's let's let's vibe on that for just a second. Can you imagine getting ever so slightly tainted with ergot beer? You drink, you're tankard, you're flagging, you're your and get sick as a dog. And just like it is the worst. It tastes fine. You were okay while you were drinking it, and then like four hours later, you were you were having the worst hangover experience of your life.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

Sick to your stomach, diarrhea.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:14

Oh god, yeah, probably the worst headache ever because you know the blood vessels in your brain are going, ah, and on top of being dehydrated because alcohol.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:24

Jeez, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:26

Oh, that'd be the worst. All right, so that was St. Anthony's fire. That was fun. Thank you for making it fun because some of the research on it sucked.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:35

You looked at pictures of gangrene for a week and realized, oh, my mom had that. Oh, yeah, right. For different reasons. Katie's mom did not have ergotism.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:47

No, no, she had diabetes. It's fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:50

Jesus Christ. All right. Have a good week, guys.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:54

Good luck.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:55

God speed. Yeah, don't eat questionable bread.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:58

Don't eat questionable bread. Or do. It's your choice. Just don't do it repeatedly. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:05

It makes me wonder, as a quick note, right before we end off, because you just said my my favorite thing. Shout out to horses. Yeah. I wonder how many fucking horses were in fields eating, you know, because they rotate fields.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:18

No, no, no, no, no. It affects animals too, because there were there were reports in the in the 1951 case of animal of like dogs chewing on rocks.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:27

You know, when when they have a horse that's just like fucking nuts out in a field, nobody can get close to it. I wonder how many just grained on a we're just eating like from the edge of a field.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:37

And just ate a bunch of ergot, and we're just like freaking out in the middle of a field.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:41

Yeah, because it absolutely hits animals too. That crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:44

We're gonna have to look that up. All right, you guys have a great week. Thank you for yeah, thank you. I was also talking to somebody just yesterday about sometimes these things are really dark and they can kind of affect me. This was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:55

Yeah, yeah. This I I find I find it deeply amusing that every now and again, like we'll we'll do too a couple of real dark ones, and then both of us are like, nope, that's enough of that. We need to laugh.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

Yeah, right. This has been morbid Mondays. Y'all have a good one.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:10

Bye.