1 00:00:00,880 --> 00:00:05,360 In the last episode, we saw how food and household ingredients could be and 2 00:00:05,639 --> 00:00:10,119 were extensively used to try to peer into the murky depths of what the future 3 00:00:10,160 --> 00:00:15,240 held for individuals desperate to know. It seems that mostly all people wanted to 4 00:00:15,279 --> 00:00:19,320 know was who they were going to marry, and today's stories aren't wildly far 5 00:00:19,440 --> 00:00:24,280 from that same theme. However, where today's stories do take a detail is 6 00:00:24,280 --> 00:00:27,679 that not only do we explore some of the causes for suspicion during the now 7 00:00:27,760 --> 00:00:32,119 infamous Salem witch trials. In fact, we dive even deeper to see how 8 00:00:32,240 --> 00:00:36,399 food and the poor farming practices of the age may have led to the whole 9 00:00:36,439 --> 00:00:41,920 disaster starting in the first place. So if you've ever doubted food's integral place 10 00:00:41,960 --> 00:00:46,000 in history, today's stories are sure to remind us all that, no matter 11 00:00:46,039 --> 00:00:51,119 what, life and history in general wouldn't and in fact couldn't be the same 12 00:00:51,520 --> 00:01:03,799 without the daily rituals that food brings. These are the bizarre but true stories 13 00:01:03,840 --> 00:01:08,040 from history that in some way involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and 14 00:01:08,200 --> 00:01:23,480 this is the Fantastic History of food. One of today's sponsors is Athletic Greens. 15 00:01:23,840 --> 00:01:27,400 So what is Athletic Greens. Well, with one delicious scoop of Athletic 16 00:01:27,400 --> 00:01:33,560 Greens, you're absorbing seventy five high quality vitamins, minerals, whole food sourced 17 00:01:33,599 --> 00:01:38,879 superfoods, probiotics and adaptogens to help you start your day right. 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Today, 34 00:03:02,439 --> 00:03:07,280 we start off by looking at one of the stranger foodstuffs used for divination 35 00:03:07,360 --> 00:03:12,719 purposes, the humble onion. Now also known as chrom neomancy. It was 36 00:03:12,800 --> 00:03:16,719 historically found to have been performed across Europe, Africa, and Northern Asia. 37 00:03:16,840 --> 00:03:22,680 The onion itself was already regarded as a mystical symbol of spirituality and eternity, 38 00:03:23,080 --> 00:03:27,520 so much so that the ancient Egyptians took sacred oaths while holding an onion in 39 00:03:27,560 --> 00:03:30,479 their right hand, much like how we today use a holy book like the 40 00:03:30,560 --> 00:03:37,680 Bible to swear upon while taking an oath. Chromnomancy had various forms and outcomes 41 00:03:37,680 --> 00:03:40,479 from which they hoped to divine the future. They were of course the marriage 42 00:03:40,479 --> 00:03:45,159 related ones, but they were also sometimes used to predict the weather. By 43 00:03:45,240 --> 00:03:50,199 judging the thickness of an onion's skin. Onions were often used to gain insight 44 00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:53,439 into the health and well being of loved ones far from home. They would 45 00:03:53,479 --> 00:03:57,840 be placed upon a sacred altar in the home and then have the names of 46 00:03:57,840 --> 00:04:01,439 the loved ones carved into them. Onions would then be left alone, undisturbed 47 00:04:01,680 --> 00:04:08,479 until they began to sprout. The real magic began, because the faster an 48 00:04:08,479 --> 00:04:11,800 onion sprouted, the better the health than the well being of the loved one 49 00:04:11,840 --> 00:04:15,560 inscribed upon the onion. As usual, they were also used to provide advice 50 00:04:15,600 --> 00:04:19,199 for those who found themselves caught in a love triangle. Not knowing which of 51 00:04:19,199 --> 00:04:24,680 the suitors to choose, the lovelorn woman would carve the names of the two 52 00:04:24,759 --> 00:04:29,399 lovers on too separate onions, and then whichever onions sprouted first would tell her 53 00:04:29,399 --> 00:04:32,480 everything she needed to know about which lover would be most suitable and worthy of 54 00:04:32,480 --> 00:04:38,199 her affections. In fact, this method didn't just work for choosing between two 55 00:04:38,240 --> 00:04:41,800 lovers, who could have been used to answer any yes or no question by 56 00:04:41,839 --> 00:04:46,040 simply inscribing yes or no on too two separate onions and applying the same methodology. 57 00:04:47,040 --> 00:04:50,279 In Southern Germany. They would also attempt to predict the weather of the 58 00:04:50,519 --> 00:04:57,040 entire following year by means of onion divination with the use of his vibal calendar, 59 00:04:57,720 --> 00:05:02,360 literally an onion calendar. Twelve large round onions were removed from the fields 60 00:05:02,480 --> 00:05:06,399 and placed inside a barn, lined up in a row along a large wooden 61 00:05:06,439 --> 00:05:12,120 board. There were twelve onions to each represent one of the twelve months of 62 00:05:12,120 --> 00:05:15,920 the coming year. In a simple method to try to divine how much rain 63 00:05:15,959 --> 00:05:18,319 would fall in each of the coming months, Salt was then sprinkled onto each 64 00:05:18,319 --> 00:05:23,319 of the onions. They were then left over night in a barn without heating 65 00:05:23,519 --> 00:05:27,879 but also warm enough to prevent frost, and then inspected the following morning. 66 00:05:28,480 --> 00:05:31,000 The amount of liquid present in each of the onions the next day would tell 67 00:05:31,040 --> 00:05:34,959 them how much rain and or snow there would be in each of the respective 68 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:40,800 months to come. Now we move on to and in fact end with the 69 00:05:40,959 --> 00:05:46,560 rich history of a particular foodstuff's influence on witchcraft and fortune telling, and this 70 00:05:46,680 --> 00:05:50,680 practice went by the name of umancy. Do you know yet which ingredients this 71 00:05:50,800 --> 00:05:54,639 involves? Well, you've got a few minutes to work it out while I 72 00:05:54,680 --> 00:05:59,399 give you some of the backstory. Back in the seventeen hundreds, the witchcraft 73 00:05:59,439 --> 00:06:02,600 panic was in full swing and a boy by the name of John Hale would 74 00:06:02,639 --> 00:06:06,639 witness his first execution of a witch when he was just twelve years old, 75 00:06:08,160 --> 00:06:13,000 and this moment was burned into John's consciousness and would dictate much of the life 76 00:06:13,040 --> 00:06:21,360 that lay before him. He would grow up to become a Puritan reverend in 77 00:06:21,439 --> 00:06:25,680 his hometown of Beverly, Massachusetts, and would end up being one of the 78 00:06:25,720 --> 00:06:30,079 pivotal figures in the now infamous Salem witch trials. Just before his death in 79 00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:34,480 seventeen hundred, he would write down his memoirs in a book published after his 80 00:06:34,560 --> 00:06:41,839 death titled A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft Now. In his time 81 00:06:41,879 --> 00:06:46,480 as a reverend, he listened to many confessions from his parishioners and would then 82 00:06:46,959 --> 00:06:51,639 use these secretive confessions to accuse certain woman of witchcraft, testifying against at least 83 00:06:51,639 --> 00:06:57,240 two of them at their trials. One of them was rather ironically named Goody 84 00:06:57,360 --> 00:07:00,120 Bishop, and the other poor woman who was accused had possibly one of the 85 00:07:00,160 --> 00:07:08,319 most unfortunate names in history, a certain Missus Dorcas Hall. These women was 86 00:07:08,399 --> 00:07:12,639 simply just two out of more than two hundred women accused just in the span 87 00:07:12,720 --> 00:07:17,120 between sixteen ninety two and sixteen ninety three. Conveniently, however, John would 88 00:07:17,160 --> 00:07:21,000 go on to regret much of the accusations, in which trial nonsense, right 89 00:07:21,079 --> 00:07:25,720 around the time that his own wife was accused herself of being a witch. 90 00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:30,160 But what does this have to do with food and fortune telling? While in 91 00:07:30,160 --> 00:07:34,439 the sixteen hundreds, the Puritans and their clergymen were strongly opposed to any form 92 00:07:34,480 --> 00:07:40,040 of magic at all, and one of the most pervasive and therefore most heinous, 93 00:07:40,439 --> 00:07:45,199 was fortune telling. Now, naturally, this didn't stop people from practicing 94 00:07:45,199 --> 00:07:48,519 it, despite the severe potential for downside should one be caught. But in 95 00:07:48,600 --> 00:07:56,120 John's book he describes one particularly fascinating form of divination. That's right, oomancy, 96 00:07:56,600 --> 00:08:01,920 the practice of using eggs to interpret the few. But even by this 97 00:08:01,959 --> 00:08:05,519 time, the idea of umancy was several hundreds, if not thousands of years 98 00:08:05,519 --> 00:08:11,519 old. Ancient Greek fortune tellers known as soothsayers, coined the term itself, 99 00:08:11,759 --> 00:08:18,600 stemming from the words un for egg and manchia, meaning divination. Gaius Suetonius 100 00:08:18,600 --> 00:08:22,519 tranquilis a Roman historian who lived from one twenty two BC until sixty nine BC. 101 00:08:24,040 --> 00:08:28,600 Once described how the Roman Empress Livia Drusilla kept a chicken egg in her 102 00:08:28,600 --> 00:08:31,480 cleavage in the belief that the sex of the chick that hatched from it would 103 00:08:31,519 --> 00:08:37,080 determine the sex of her unborn child. Cultures all across the globe have relied 104 00:08:37,120 --> 00:08:41,519 on eggs to predict the future. From Asia to South America, a variety 105 00:08:41,559 --> 00:08:46,639 of different methods were employed, and one method was described as the venus glass. 106 00:08:48,600 --> 00:08:52,080 The concept for this one is simple. All you needed to do was 107 00:08:52,159 --> 00:08:56,039 take a glass of warm water and slowly pour your raw egg whites into the 108 00:08:56,120 --> 00:09:01,440 water. Then watch and wait as the proteins and the egg whites began to 109 00:09:01,519 --> 00:09:05,759 denature. The shapes left behind offered clues to such things as who you may 110 00:09:05,799 --> 00:09:09,720 marry or how you may die, and in a very similar way to how 111 00:09:09,759 --> 00:09:15,320 people interpreted the shapes left behind in tea leaves. If the egg whites formed 112 00:09:15,320 --> 00:09:18,000 the shape of a plow or a horse, your husband might be a farmer. 113 00:09:18,559 --> 00:09:22,399 If it looked like a castle or a fortress, he may be a 114 00:09:22,399 --> 00:09:24,799 soldier, or better yet, a nobleman. And if it looked like a 115 00:09:24,840 --> 00:09:35,799 boat, then your husband was going to be a Fisherman. This episode is 116 00:09:35,840 --> 00:09:41,600 presented by Chemists in the Kitchen by lab x, a YouTube video series spotlighting 117 00:09:41,720 --> 00:09:46,600 the power of chemistry and how science and food can bring people together. In 118 00:09:46,639 --> 00:09:52,440 each episode, real scientists walk you through things like making your own pickles, 119 00:09:52,759 --> 00:09:56,960 the chemistry behind ceviche, or the formula for perfect homemade pretzels, and so 120 00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:03,080 much more. Essentially, it's a love letter to science, cooking, and 121 00:10:03,240 --> 00:10:07,279 individuality, with some great tips on how you can apply real scientific principles to 122 00:10:07,279 --> 00:10:11,320 your everyday cooking. On top of that, it's just a lot of fun. 123 00:10:13,039 --> 00:10:16,080 Season two is airing right now, and you can catch up with every 124 00:10:16,080 --> 00:10:22,039 episode for free on YouTube by searching Chemists in the Kitchen or by simply going 125 00:10:22,080 --> 00:10:28,200 to YouTube dot com slash lab x nas. Again, that's YouTube dot com 126 00:10:28,240 --> 00:10:39,759 slash lab x nas now. A quick detour to the Ozarks of all places, 127 00:10:41,039 --> 00:10:43,759 where there is a commonly held superstition that if a girl hollowed out a 128 00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:48,000 hard boiled egg, filled that hollowed out egg with salt, then ate it 129 00:10:48,159 --> 00:10:52,600 and went to bed desperately thirsty, she would then dream of her future beloved 130 00:10:52,840 --> 00:10:58,679 bringing her a glass of much needed water. But back to ancient history, 131 00:10:58,879 --> 00:11:03,159 and in the Celtic plans Umancy was an important part of the aforementioned Sammayan festival, 132 00:11:03,519 --> 00:11:07,600 celebrating the end of the harvest season and the winter that was fast approaching. 133 00:11:09,399 --> 00:11:13,320 Druids would employ this egg greeting ritual into their festival celebrations to predict what 134 00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:18,559 lay ahead for the coming year. Similarly, German pagans also did this ritual 135 00:11:18,720 --> 00:11:24,320 and referred to it as the egg oracle or air oracol. Jacob Grimm even 136 00:11:24,360 --> 00:11:30,200 describes a similar ritual in his eighteen seventy eight book Deutschen Mythology as a means 137 00:11:30,240 --> 00:11:33,840 to determine if a child had been bewitched by the devil. The connection of 138 00:11:33,960 --> 00:11:39,120 eggs to spirituality is fairly clear in its deep connection to birth and the cycle 139 00:11:39,159 --> 00:11:43,879 of life, as well as its almost ubiquitous availability to almost every culture. 140 00:11:45,679 --> 00:11:48,320 And perhaps it was just that fact that almost anyone could make one of these 141 00:11:48,360 --> 00:11:54,559 so called venus glasses that the Puritan ministers took particular umbradge with it. But 142 00:11:54,639 --> 00:11:58,080 it's hard to stop people who at the best of times were living in an 143 00:11:58,120 --> 00:12:01,240 uncertain world from wanting to try their very best to know what lay ahead of 144 00:12:01,279 --> 00:12:05,960 them. And there were few more unstable times for the villagers in Salem than 145 00:12:07,120 --> 00:12:11,399 Right around this time, immigrants and refugees from all over Europe were flooding into 146 00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:16,919 New England, mostly thanks to King William's war with the French. As the 147 00:12:16,960 --> 00:12:20,879 population numbers grew, so did the melting pot of cultural practices and rituals. 148 00:12:22,639 --> 00:12:24,879 No one knew what to expect in this new land that they had arrived in, 149 00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:30,559 and so they consulted with astrologers and fortune tellers to help them navigate what 150 00:12:30,679 --> 00:12:33,559 lay ahead of them, even if that meant ignoring the advice of the local 151 00:12:33,639 --> 00:12:39,480 reverend. Particularly for single women ripped from communities in which they knew almost everyone. 152 00:12:39,919 --> 00:12:45,080 Now they found themselves at a pivotal moment in their young lives, knowing 153 00:12:45,159 --> 00:12:48,200 that they needed to find a partner, but not knowing how or where to 154 00:12:48,240 --> 00:12:52,440 find one, let alone a good one amongst a sea of unknown faces. 155 00:12:54,200 --> 00:12:58,720 The Venus glass was therefore a simple way to provide these women with at least 156 00:12:58,720 --> 00:13:03,240 an inkling of what to look outful going forward. But it also may not 157 00:13:03,360 --> 00:13:07,080 then be a coincidence that food based magic was such a large proponent of the 158 00:13:07,120 --> 00:13:15,679 Salem which trials themselves Accusations of witchcraft often scented around food and its tangential elements. 159 00:13:16,200 --> 00:13:18,440 If a farmer's butter would in churn properly, it was because a witch 160 00:13:18,440 --> 00:13:22,919 had put a curse on the cream itself. If food spoiled faster than usual, 161 00:13:24,159 --> 00:13:26,639 or a cow produced rotten milk out of its udders, this could surely 162 00:13:26,720 --> 00:13:31,799 only be the work of a local witch. And the tie in is obvious 163 00:13:31,919 --> 00:13:35,840 when you remember that at the time, women were responsible for almost all of 164 00:13:35,879 --> 00:13:39,919 the food production, including the brewing of beer for people to drink because the 165 00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:43,720 water was too unsanitary. So if a woman dared to disrupt the domestic order 166 00:13:43,720 --> 00:13:48,159 of things, it was a serious threat to the social hierarchy and the stability 167 00:13:48,440 --> 00:13:54,840 of these young and still extremely fragile communities. So when a woman was seen 168 00:13:54,879 --> 00:13:58,559 to show curse so called responsibilities, by heaven forbid, living according to her 169 00:13:58,600 --> 00:14:03,120 own it's not then a major leap to see how people could begin to view 170 00:14:03,159 --> 00:14:07,360 that woman as a threat. And when even the smallest thing went wrong in 171 00:14:07,360 --> 00:14:11,480 a housewives food production, rather than incur the wrath of an angry husband, 172 00:14:11,759 --> 00:14:16,240 how much easier it was to simply say that the old crone who actively shuns 173 00:14:16,279 --> 00:14:22,879 the requirements of society must have been the one behind the mishap. Eventually, 174 00:14:22,919 --> 00:14:26,840 however, the mass hysteria around witches began to fade. But only recently have 175 00:14:26,960 --> 00:14:33,320 we potentially discovered that the entire witch panic saga itself may have in fact also 176 00:14:33,480 --> 00:14:37,440 been caused by food. As we know, the panic in Salem all began 177 00:14:37,559 --> 00:14:43,240 when two young girls began having unexplained convulsions and illnesses. Then when other townsfolk 178 00:14:43,320 --> 00:14:48,879 also began to experience these same illnesses, that was when the accusations began. 179 00:14:48,919 --> 00:14:54,960 But in nineteen seventy six, doctor Linda Corporeal found evidence that supported a truly 180 00:14:54,039 --> 00:14:58,840 mind boggling hypothesis that in fact, witches had nothing to do with these illnesses 181 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:03,200 all, but rather it was the infestation of the town's rye bread with a 182 00:15:03,240 --> 00:15:11,039 particular fungus known as ergot Interestingly, the behavior exhibited by the townsfolk as a 183 00:15:11,039 --> 00:15:15,799 whole fits the bill perfectly for what has been studied in other cases of rye 184 00:15:15,799 --> 00:15:22,120 bread induced ergotism. Now, ergotism forms in Rye after a particularly harsh winter 185 00:15:22,480 --> 00:15:28,440 followed by a damp spring, exactly the same conditions experienced in Salem. The 186 00:15:28,559 --> 00:15:33,679 year the panic started. After the rye plant contracts the ergot fungus, it 187 00:15:33,720 --> 00:15:39,320 grows and replaces the shoots on the grain itself with purplish black growths containing lysurgic 188 00:15:39,360 --> 00:15:45,279 acid and ergotamine. Being that the communities back then were still finding their feet 189 00:15:45,440 --> 00:15:48,320 and didn't have a wealth of expert knowledge, it's theorized that even when the 190 00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:54,240 villagers saw the darker shoots, they more than likely simply attributed them to overexposure 191 00:15:54,279 --> 00:15:58,080 to the sun. Alongside this, they also didn't have the luxury of throwing 192 00:15:58,120 --> 00:16:03,679 away an entire crop of food in what was already a fairly under resourced time, 193 00:16:03,279 --> 00:16:08,919 and so the rye was turned into bread and consumed anyway. Or Once 194 00:16:08,960 --> 00:16:14,639 the rye bread is eaten, the ergotism can cause severe convulsions, can cause 195 00:16:14,720 --> 00:16:18,519 muscle spasms, and the sensation of insects crawling under the skin, the exact 196 00:16:18,600 --> 00:16:25,320 symptoms described by the girls in Salem. Now in another entirely coincidental turn of 197 00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:30,679 events, this can also cause extreme delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia in people 198 00:16:30,080 --> 00:16:36,399 due to the lysurgic acid from which the drug LSD is manufactured. At the 199 00:16:36,440 --> 00:16:40,279 time in Salem, the village doctor was also part of the clergy of the 200 00:16:40,360 --> 00:16:44,440 church, and so was predisposed to first assume the cause was something evil, 201 00:16:44,879 --> 00:16:48,600 especially considering his lack of intensive formal training leading to his lack of any knowledge 202 00:16:48,600 --> 00:16:55,200 of ergotism as a viable disease. So when he began making accusations of witchcraft, 203 00:16:55,399 --> 00:16:57,960 the townsfolk were quick to jump on board with his theory, not helped 204 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:03,599 by their own experiences with ergot induced delusion and paranoia, and in surely one 205 00:17:03,599 --> 00:17:08,079 of the strongest cases for this argument. The panic which so quickly engulfed this 206 00:17:08,240 --> 00:17:14,559 town just as quickly disappeared a year later, very much coinciding with the town 207 00:17:14,680 --> 00:17:19,359 running out of the ergot contaminated grain. So as you can see, food, 208 00:17:19,720 --> 00:17:22,960 for all of its joy and sustenance, can also bring with it the 209 00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:27,480 means by which to debilitate an entire population. For most of us, we're 210 00:17:27,559 --> 00:17:33,000 lucky to live in a time and a place when quality control, food availability, 211 00:17:33,079 --> 00:17:36,519 and for the most part, food security are just a part of daily 212 00:17:36,559 --> 00:17:40,920 life. But let's never forget there are still many parts of our world to 213 00:17:41,039 --> 00:17:44,880 day with human beings just like you and I, who are still living each 214 00:17:44,960 --> 00:17:48,960 day not knowing within next meal may come from, So maybe take a minute 215 00:17:49,400 --> 00:17:55,000 think about how you and I can actively make a difference in seeing that come 216 00:17:55,039 --> 00:18:03,000 to an end, possibly even in our own lifetimes. This show is made 217 00:18:03,160 --> 00:18:07,319 entirely by me, Nick Charlie Key, with our theme music having been made 218 00:18:07,319 --> 00:18:17,480 by the Enigma that is, the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd like to 219 00:18:17,519 --> 00:18:21,119 support the show, the simplest way to do that is over on our Patreon 220 00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:23,720 account. There's just one option, so for just two bucks a month, 221 00:18:25,039 --> 00:18:27,640 you'll help me keep producing the show, and in return, you'll get your 222 00:18:27,720 --> 00:18:33,680 name forever etched onto our supporters Wall of Fame over on our website, and 223 00:18:33,680 --> 00:18:37,599 then maybe listen out for your name in an upcoming episode. So until next 224 00:18:37,599 --> 00:18:37,880 time, bonappetit.