Walking Through A Life: The seven seas of rhye - ergotism and egotism and LSD that can cure this disease

Separating the wheat from the chaff... and the Holy Firesent by god

Many things that occur in nature are bad things for a good reason...

Whilst walking the Camino in Spain I came across the Monastery of Saint Anton, which was dedicated to treating people who had succumbed (literally a succubus a creature that sucks the very life from its host) to what had become known as the plague of Saint Anthony's fire, gangrenous ergotism in the masses from their staple food the rye grass they used to make their daily bread...

Egotism a parasite once taken hold in a human host can be passed on to others as a way of protecting onself from others with the disease of the mind and has spread so thoroughly one might consider it too much of a coincidence that the two labels have such a similar spelling ;)

The occurrence of Claviceps purpurea must have began with the cultivation of rye since it was far more common on that host than in other grains. Rye was a weed grain and occurred wherever wheat was cultivated. Often it became the dominant plant when wheat fields were abandoned. Thus, in a way, where ever civilization became established, rye would follow it there. However, it was not cultivated for food until some time, in the early Middle Ages (around the 5th. Century), in what is now eastern Europe and western Russia.

Ergot of Rye is a plant disease that is caused by the fungus Claviceps purpurea. The so-called ergot that replaces the grain of the rye is a dark, purplish sclerotium (Figs. 1a-b), from which the sexual stage (Fig. 2a-b), of the lifecycle will form after over wintering. The sexual stage consists of stroma in which the asci and ascospores are produced. Although the ergot is far different in appearance than the true grain, its occurrence was so common that it was thought to be part of the rye plant, until the 1850's, when the true nature of the ergot was understood. Although the common name indicates that this fungus is a disease of rye, it also can infect several other grains, with rye being the most common host for this species. It is the ergot stage of the fungus that contains a storehouse of various compounds that have been useful as pharmaceutical drugs as well as mycotoxins that can be fatal when consumed. The proportion of the compounds produced will vary within the species. Thus, the victim that has lived through ergot poisoning once may experience different symptoms if they were unfortunate enough to consume ergot for a second time. This species was also the original source from which LSD was first isolated. It is believed that symptoms of ergotism have been recorded since the middle ages and possibly even as far back as ancient Greece.

Ergotism and the Bubonic Plague
In order to understand the disease, let us first go over its life history. The bacterium, Yersinia pestis, is the actual pathogenic agent that causes the Bubonic Plague. However, it does not directly infect humans, most commonly, Xenopsylla cheopis, a species of flea that specifically infects rats is the carrier of the disease. Pulex irritans, a flea that typically infects human can carry also carry the disease, but this is uncommon. The disease cycle begins when the bacterium enters the stomach of a flea that has bitten an infected rat and dined on its blood. If the rat host dies of the disease or for some other reason, the flea will have to find another host. If the flea should bite a human and sucks its blood, it regurgitates blood and plague bacilli into the bite site thereby infecting its human host.

egotism

ˈɛgətɪz(ə)m,ˈiː-/

noun

noun: egotism

the fact of being excessively conceited or absorbed in oneself.

"in his arrogance and egotism, he underestimated Gill"

synonyms: