Breaking The Spell Of Salem ‘Witches’ Were Actually Afflicted With Encephalitis, Cheney Author Writes

The words Salem and witchcraft go together like Halloween and pumpkin. The infamous Massachusetts witch trials have fueled America’s imagination for more than 300 years.

But let’s try a new word combination.

Salem and…encephalitis?

Don’t wince. According to the book “A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials” by Cheney author Laurie Winn Carlson, witchcraft was not the reason why certain members of the 1692 Salem community began “to fall into fits, feel pains in their arms and legs like biting and pricking, bark like dogs, grovel on the ground like hogs, and even turn suicidal.”

Disease, she says, was to blame. And that disease was encephalitis - the same viral infection, coincidentally, that in recent weeks has been credited for killing scores of birds and sickening more than 40 people in New York City.

“The bird die-off is something I ran into in the Salem research,” Carlson says. “The people wrote that the birds were all dying. And they wrote about that during the plague epidemics that hit London, too.”

Carlson, who will read from her book at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Hillyard branch of the Spokane Public Library, is receiving attention from the nation’s scientific circles because of her theory. Oliver Sacks, the medical detective whose work resulted in the film “Awakenings,” was an early supporter. Katrina L. Kelner, deputy managing editor of Science magazine, provided one of the book’s most impressive blurbs.

“Were the `bewitched’ people in Salem actually affected by encephalitis?” Kelner wrote. “Carlson makes a good case that they were.”

And Kirkus Reviews, a respected book-industry review service, said of “A Fever in Salem” that Carlson “does an admirable job of pointing out the inadequacies of other explanations for the witchcraft phenomenon and of demonstrating the congruity of bewitchment and encephalitis symptoms… .”

On the other hand, Kirkus scolds Carlson for what it calls the book’s “weird afterword which suggests that there may be actual cases of `demonic possession’ and that those who do not so acknowledge are `arrogant as well as ignorant.”’

In addition, more than one science journal - including Kelner’s own magazine - has refused to print an article based on Carlson’s research. And, says Dr. Michael Green, a professor of history at Eastern Washington University, other members of academe are likely to pounce.

“When you stop to think about this,” Green says, “this is one of the most interesting, controversial topics in all of American history. And what she’s done is take over 200 years of scholarship and turn it on its head.”

Talking over the phone from his office in Cheney, Green laughs.

“An independent scholar from Cheney, Wash., rattling academe,” he says. “I love it!”

Carlson’s rattling started two years ago when she began working on a master’s degree in history. She attracted Green’s attention by turning a class assignment into a manuscript, which was later published as the non-fiction book “On Sidesaddles to Heaven: The Women of the Rocky Mountain Mission.”

Then, while reading a textbook on historical detection, Carlson balked at a chapter concerning the Salem witch trials.

“I wasn’t interested in Salem witchcraft,” she recalls. “I’ve never been a witch buff.”

Something did grab her attention, though, as she pored over personal accounts of the Salem residents.

“When I read them, I thought, `These people were sick,”’ Carlson says. “It just sounded like they were suffering from something.”

She made a list of the symptoms, consulted a medical book - “One of those over-the-counter guides,” Carlson says - and decided the problem was encephalitis. Months of exhaustive research followed, leading ultimately to her writing the book as proof.

“I read somewhere that this is what a good historian does,” she says. “They don’t know the answers. They know the questions.”

And to her, the question was, “Why did this happen?”

What happened in Salem occurred roughly between the years 1689-1700. This was early in the American experience, remember, when bleeding was still considered a standard medical practice.

So it’s not surprising that a number of colony residents would report health problems. Yet the problems of this 11-year stretch were specific: Victims reported suffering convulsions, hallucinations, various forms of what sound like psychosis, skin ailments, bouts of lethargy, tendencies to shout uncontrollably and problems with arms and legs “nearly twisted out of joint.”

In its most basic form, encephalitis is a disease marked by brain inflammation. As the brain swells, many of the above symptoms - and others, such as sensitivity to light, hearing loss, eye twitching - are manifested. There are several forms of the disease, all relatively rare in the United States (affecting maybe 1,500 people a year).

The disease is transmitted in various ways, although mosquitoes are the most publicized carriers.

And like other viral-caused diseases, there is no cure. Not everyone contracts it, and not everyone dies from it. But viral encephalitis, once contracted, can linger in a person’s nervous system without provoking any symptoms - only to re-occur seemingly by chance.

Which is why, Carlson says, the problem in Salem got complicated. In early 1692, when the doctors of the time were confronted with this new strain of ailment, they refused to treat it.

“In the days before medical licensing,” Carlson says, “your whole career depended on being able to heal people. So if someone had something you couldn’t cure, you wouldn’t treat them. It was bad for business.”

So the patients, and the overall problem that they represented, ended up being passed over to the colony’s religious leaders. Where Carlson sees disease, they saw the work of witches. And since the colony had adopted English common law, and since witchcraft was a crime, the search quickly went out for those responsible.

“Witchcraft is a crime, and it had to be prosecuted,” Carlson says. “There was no turning back.”

By September, 19 colonists had been convicted as witches and hanged. More than a hundred more were awaiting their own trials before rationality returned.

“The next year all were released and the court closed,” Carlson wrote. “The craze ended as abruptly as it began.”

Considering the mores of the time, not to mention the harsh laws and the overall ignorance of the colonial populace, such an over-reaction to something unexplainable isn’t hard to understand.

“You’ve got to have a scapegoat, I guess,” Carlson says.

Harder to explain is the cause of the mysterious ailments themselves. Over time, the legend of Salem has endured, arousing numerous theories. The causes have been blamed on everything from sexual frustration to a bad reaction to moldy grain. And there are still those who would point the fingers at sorcery and spell-casting.

To Carlson, the source of the affliction was clearly biological. And, pointing at the recent encephalitis outbreak in New York, she says the problem isn’t going away anytime soon.

“You know, the microbial world, we don’t have a handle on it,” she says. “The more I talked to scientists about the project, the more I discovered that is unknown.”

She’s convinced that many of the ailments that today affect us will, in a like manner, one day be explained away as symptoms of disease.

“It just make me think, gosh, what’s swirling around us right now?” Carlson says.

This sidebar appeared with the story: BOOKS Meet the author Laurie Winn Carlson, author of “A Fever in Salem,” will read from her book at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Hillyard Branch of the Spokane Public Library, 4005 N. Cook, and at 7 p.m. Oct. 26 in the library’s downtown branch, 906 W. Main.