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A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials

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In the harsh winter months of 1692 several young girls in Salem Village began to experience violent physical seizures. The community responded with unsuccessful prayer and fasting. A local physician soon diagnosed that the presence of evil, not physical illness, was responsible for these inexplicable fits. In the next seven months nineteen accused witches were hanged in Salem. Another, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. Two more of the alleged witches died while being held in jail. In the expansive annals of American History this incident at Salem can appear relatively insignificant. It has nevertheless generated an enormous amount of interest, and a large body of historiographic literature. The terms Salem, witch-hunt, and witch trials, have literally become a part of our regular vocabulary. Relative to this interest in the Salem phenomenon the historian John Demos noted that popular interest in the subject of Salem is so "badly out of proportion to its actual historical significance," that "perhaps the sane course for the future would be silence." Laurie Winn Carlson has obviously not taken Demos' advice. Her new work, A Fever in Salem, is the most recent addition to this enormous body of work. Unfortunately her work, while creative and unique, does not make any meaningful contribution to the aforementioned rich body of literature. Taking a page from Linnda Caporael's previous attempt to identify a physical pathology as a cause for the Salem phenomenon, Ms. Carlson presents a theory that the witch trials were the result of an epidemic of tick-borne encephalitis lethargica at Salem. Ms. Caporael, in the early 1970's, created somewhat of a stir by proposing that a fungus ("wheat ergot"), was growing on the rye grain grown in Salem Village. When consumed, this fungus resulted in the onset of hallucinations similar to those associated with the ingestion of LSD. And therefore this infected rye grain was responsible for the hallucinations and seizures experienced by the young girls. Now comes Laurie Winn Carlson, attempting to identify another culprit. In support of her thesis Ms. Carlson explained how the symptoms experienced by the young girls in Salem (hallucinations, hyperactivity, uncontrollable bodily movements, and partial paralysis) were similar to those associated with the "hyperkinetic" form of the disease. Unfortunately, there is little else to justify her conclusion. In the course of this work Ms. Carlson does acknowledge the more conventional historical analyses relative to the Salem events. Previously, historians identified a number of economic, social, and psychological factors, intersecting at a unique time and place in history, resulting in an individual and community hysteria at Salem. As those works indicate, Salem was a community in crisis. The leading institution was a repressive Puritan Church incorporating a submissive role for females and a genuine belief in the presence of Satan. In addition, Salem experienced economic division associated with the introduction of mercantile capitalism into an agrarian society. Such economic factionalism resulting in tension characterized by heightened competition and inevitable jealousy. Add to this an ongoing threat of Indian violence, and it becomes clear why Salem was a community ripe for the tragic events of 1692. Even in the face of such an expansive body of historiography, Carlson maintains her thesis. Carlson's refusal to accept the validity of such previous work appears based on her own apparently unwavering need to identify a specific explanation for the physical symptoms experienced by the girls. Laurie Winn Carlson's A Fever in Salem simply fails to make a valuable contribution to the body of Salem historiography. The author's attempt to reduce a complex phenomenon to some isolated tick bites is untenable. Even if the original accusing girls were afflicted with encephalitis lethargica, that does not explain the community-wide contagion of hysteria that Salem subsequently experienced. Indeed, as was the previous case with the wheat ergot theory, a hypothesis based on an epidemic of tick-borne encephalitis cannot eliminate the myriad factors that, taken as a whole, caused the Salem witch-hunt. Reading A Fever in Salem will hopefully pique the reader's interest in learning more about the Salem incident. Should that be the case, there is a wealth of fine historical literature, including the work of John Demos, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Carol Karlsen, Elizabeth Reis and Peter Hoffer, among others, available to educate and enlighten the curious.

This book introduces a new theory of why the Salem witch trials took place: encephalitis. An inflammation of the brain caused by a virus. Comparing this theory to others, namely ergot poisoning and psychological issues stemming from such a strict, closed-off society, encephalitis seems like the most plausible and probable cause. Neither ergo poisoning or psychological causes explain many of the symptoms and behavior of the afflicted people.

More of a medical than a history book, the author's very thorough research is easy to understand. A lot of myths are debunked. For instance, most people think that only teenage girls were afflicted with the strange symptoms, which isn't true. Infants, young children and older adults, as well as boys and men where afflicted and quite a few died, which is rarely discussed in other material about the Salem witch trials. It was the young women that were the accusers, which explains why research has been focused almost solely on them. Some strains of encephalitis affect preteen/teenage/young adult age groups more than infants or older adults.

Pockets of this kind of behavior was seen before 1692 in the New World which also lead to witch accusations. There were also much larger outbreaks in Europe that ended in the deaths of thousands of people accused as witches. The symptoms of encephalitis and the behavior of the accusers fit extremely well.

Not everyone believed that the effects of encephalitis were from an evil source. Depending on where you lived, certain aspects of this disease (not eating or drinking for long periods of time and not dying from it) was seen as a gift from God, that you were special. But in the Salem community it was believed to be from Satan. If you study the Puritan beliefs and way of living, you'll understand why.

Encephalitis isn't passed from human to human, it is passed to humans through mosquitoes or ticks, which explains why the entire population of Salem didn't become ill with the epidemic and only one or two people per household (or none) were affected. Encephalitis symptoms also change over time, which explains why more recent outbreaks haven't been as serious.

The accusations and executions suddenly ended in Salem in the fall of 1692, when the mosquitoes and ticks responsible for carrying the disease would have died due to the cold weather. It's also interesting to note that most of the people afflicted lived on the west side of Salem, close to the river and swamp that would have harbored mosquitoes during that spring and summer. There is no cure for encephalitis and in 17th century Salem there were no effective treatments. I found it fascinating.

Winn Carlson has found the facts behind Salem's horror but others may not like that. The witchcraft "industry" is alive and well in academia, where people have embraced the girlish hysteria stuff for decades. Time to rid those poor girls of their Freudian explanations. Thanks to Winn Carlson, the women are no longer seen as acting out or trying to get attention. The bird migration routes seem logical, and match up with the recent epidemic of encephalitis in New York City. This book is a must for someone who wants to look at history in a new way. Who knows how many other historical events can be explained scientifically by disease?

While she has a compelling argument, one based on sensationalism, her thesis fails to illustrate why the hysteria found in Salem did not occur in other communities that were afflicted with same microbiological phenomena. This monograph makes many assumptions and more often than not her arguments seem predetermined. The amatuer reader will enjoy her writing, but academic historians will be disappointed.

As more scholarly reviewers have already pointed out, the author has done little more than propose a novel theory and then scour the historical record to prop up her suppositions. An example that sticks in my head is when Winn theorizes that mosquitoes may have been the disease bearers. Her reasoning runs: the Salem girls were mostly affected, right? And girls work in the garden, where there are mosquitoes, and girls do chores in the dawn and dusk, when mosquitoes are active. Uhhh...did Puritan men ever get out of the kitchen in Winn's world? Then a page later, she announces that it could have been ticks. After all, men went out into the woods and cut tick-infested lumber for firewood (conveniently not getting bitten). The lumber was then placed in homes where the girls lived, and, well, you do the math. It just doesn't add up to anything more than a fanciful "say, what if?....nah."

The author's hypothesis is simple enough: The frightening "fits" of accusers during the 1692 Salem witchcraft crisis were caused by an outbreak of encephalitis lethargica, a neurological disorder popularized in Oliver Sacks' 1973 book Awakenings. (A film version starring Robin Williams and Robert De Nero was released in 1990.)

As a former cell biologist, I'm well-disposed to considering microorganisms and disease as the moving force of history. (See Hans Zinsser's classic, Rats, Lice, and History: being a study in biography, which, after twelve preliminary chapters indispensable for the preparation of the lay reader, deals with the life history of typhus fever.) In this case however, the author fails to make the case.

There were a few things that prejudiced me against this book: publication by a small house (Ivan R. Dee); description of the author as an "independent scholar," somehow implying other scholars aren't; a noticeable disdain for the entire field of psychology; and, inclusion of material that is at best tangential, at worst, irrelevant. For example, there is an afterword titled Satanic Possession and Christian Beliefs outlining how to differentiate between mental illness and demonic possession. The mere possibility that there is any reality to demonic possession is antithetical to the author's hypothesis. Chapter Seven, Alternate Outcomes, recounts experiences in New Hampshire a half century after the Salem witchcraft crisis to predict how the Salem crisis might have gone. A much better example would have been the similar crisis in Stamford Connecticut that was concurrent with that in Salem. (See Richard Godbeer's Escaping Salem: the other witch hunt of 1692.)

Encephalitis lethargica is a rare neurological disorder that appeared at about the same time as the 1918 influenza pandemic. Unlike influenza which is caused by a virus, the definitive cause of encephalitis lethargica is unknown. It might even be an immunological consequence of influenza. It's symptoms are varied and vague: high fever, headache, double vision, delayed physical and mental response, lethargy, coma (in acute cases), abnormal eye movements, upper body weakness, muscular pains, tremors, neck rigidity, and behavioral changes including psychosis. (See National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.)

Like Linnda Caporeal (Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?) , Carlson tries to shoehorn symptoms like "abnormal eye movements" and "psychoses" into a physical cause. A great deal of her argument is comparing experiences reported by accusers and their observers against possible symptoms for encephalitis lethargica. In many cases, commitment to "proving" her hypothesis ignores obvious, more mundane explanations. For example, descriptions of symptoms like "some suffered only a mild affliction, perhaps a heavy weight on their chests and legs while in bed, which left them momentarily paralyzed," or "people felt sudden weights on their chests at night so that they could not breathe ... complained about weight on their chests while in bed at night, an inability to speak," are well-known descriptions of the common experience called "sleep paralysis." They do not require special explanation.

The author is sometimes overreaching, if not plain wrong. For example, page 46 states:

[Midwives] were present in Salem and in colonial settlements, but there are no references to individuals or their families seeking them out for assistance in combating an epidemic. .... Some women who were tried as witches had performed as midwives, but they were not tried for any offense connected with their vocation.

Both Mary Beth Norton's In the Devil's Snare, and Richard Godbeer's Escaping Salem report midwives did indeed serve as a kind of "nurse practitioner:"

Women like [midwife] Sarah Bates emerged as experts from those communities of mutual care, their skills endorsed by the experience and gratitude of their neighbors rather than university degrees or formal apprenticeship. Goody Bates had a finely honed instinct for discerning what ailed a sick neighbor and was widely respected for her abilities.

But what's missing from A Fever in Salem is epidemiology. This is most evident in the "touch test" used to "prove" an accused was indeed a witch. An accuser would fall into a fit - and usually faint - at the mere sight of an accused witch. If the accuser revived at the touch of the accused, it "proved" the accused was a witch. Biological epidemics are not so easily turned on and off.

In some ways, A Fever in Salem is an example of cognitive dissonance. The author continually tries to extend her hypothesis, and thereby add validity, but at each step the exercise backfires. For example, a map reprinted from Robin Briggs' Witches & Neighbors: the social and cultural context of European witchcraft, shows areas of heavy, moderate, or light "persecution or important witch-hunts." Not surprisingly, dark centers spread into moderate, then lighter areas. Two pages after, a different map, with a four-fold change in scale, shows bird migration patterns. The author's conclusion?

... we see how closely they match up. Birds migrating from sub-equatorial western Africa fly directly over these areas as they head north each spring ... Migratory birds may have brought disease from western Africa to Europe, where a virus in their blood was extracted by arboviral mosquitoes who then fed on peasants and villagers.

Not only do they not match up closely (to my eyes), eight pages later Carlson suggests the vector might have been ticks.

In all, weighed in the balance, and found wanting. I would not recommend this book.

Laurie Carlson had a theory about Salem and supported it using an ambivalence for fact that you might experience gossiping with friends over a beer at Chili's. What a disappointment because it could have been interesting. Where do I start?

[1] All her research was done using books written in the 20th century. She is (sadly) unknowingly swayed by the biases of those 20th century authors. She wrongly accepts their judgements as fact, which annoyed me immensely. [2] She accepts outlandish courtroom pranks as genuine physical ailments. Why? Even by her own description, the 'fever' that was present in the colony subscribed to far more uncontrollable symptoms than repeating the words of the accused 'in chorus'. [3] She would have benefitted from reading documents from the period. Her understanding of the period is academic and lacks any genuine understanding of the events that unfolded. [4] The sentence that finally made me stop reading? "The first arrivals at Plymouth had been delighted to discover that the Indian population had already been wiped out by an epidemic... [any 3rd grader can tell you there were Indians in Plymouth]" an epidemic which she credits to the French in Nova Scotia, despite the fact that Europeans had been fishing the waters up and down the coastline for years and had even established outposts along the coast long before the puritans arrived in Plymouth. Sigh. [5] Please don't read this book.

I happened to appreciate the author's view of what witchcraft really may have been. As a survivor of encephalitis (HSE), I know first hand that your personality changes overnight (or, right after you wake up). Most doctors today can't diagnose encephalitis so I can just imagine what brain-damaged people must have been perceived as back then. Than you for opening others' eyes.

Being a survivor I could definately understand what Laurie Winn Carlson was saying. I just more people could. Encephalitis is a strange illness, right, Laurie? Why did you even write this book? Are you a survivor? I run an email support group (if anyone is interested go to:

This book departs completely from ways of looking at Salem, such as "The Crucible," and other books I've read about witches. This is a plausible, even scary interpretation.