The Cold Winters of the Witch Hunt
SCIENCE Witchcraft and the weather
Between roughly 1520 and 1770, tens of thousands of people in Europe were executed as witches. Why then? In 2004 the economist Emily Oster compared the timing of witch trials with climate records. The most intense period of trials matched the coldest decades of the "Little Ice Age". Colder years meant failed harvests and hunger — and witches were widely believed to be able to control the weather. Oster's conclusion: when people starved and didn't understand why, they looked for someone to blame.
SCIENCE Salem and the fungus — a theory and its rebuttal
In 1976 Linnda Caporael proposed in Science that the "bewitched" girls of Salem (1692) were suffering from ergotism: poisoning by ergot, a fungus on rye that contains compounds related to LSD. It's a famous idea. The same year, also in Science, Nicholas Spanos and Jack Gottlieb replied that the symptoms didn't fit (ergot would have struck whole households, with vomiting and diarrhoea that the records don't mention) and that the accusations followed social lines, not food supplies. Most historians today side with the rebuttal.
WHY WE TELL BOTH
The fungus theory is satisfying because it makes the witch hunt nobody's fault. The weather study is harder: it shows how ordinary people, under pressure, turn on their neighbours. That's the lesson worth keeping.
HISTORY The Dutch exception
The Dutch Republic stopped executing witches early compared with much of Europe, and Oudewater's honest scales (lesson 1) became a symbol of that. Nijmegen's own Mariken was forgiven, not burned.
On the Dance Floor
Close the night with a question rather than an exercise: who do we "weigh" today — who gets blamed when times are hard? Then let the last dance be for the people who were never given a certificate.
DONE WHEN...
You can explain Oster's weather finding, give both sides of the Salem ergot debate, and say why the second explanation is the more uncomfortable one.
References & Resources
Oster, E. (2004). Witchcraft, weather and economic growth in Renaissance Europe. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(1), 215–228.
Caporael, L. R. (1976). Ergotism: the Satan loosed in Salem? Science, 192(4234), 21–26.
Spanos, N. P. & Gottlieb, J. (1976). Ergotism and the Salem Village witch trials. Science, 194(4272), 1390–1394.