Pont-Saint-Esprit

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Pont-Saint-Esprit (Occitan Lo Pònt Sant Esperit) is a commune of southern France, in the Gard département and has a population (1999) of 9,265 (Spiripontains). The commune is situated on the Rhône River and is the site of a historical crossing, hence its name.

The Ardèche River flows into the Rhône, just to the north of the bridge.

1951 disease

An outbreak of disease marked by acute psychotic episodes and various physical symptoms occurred in summer 1951 in Pont-Saint-Esprit, which caused more than 250 cases, 7 deaths, and 50 persons "interned" in asylums. The alimentary intoxications, which affected other parts of France but were the most serious in Pont-Saint-Esprit, were traced to "damned bread" (pain maudit). Some misidentified the mass-poisoning as ergotism (which included sensationalist popular accounts attempting to link the poisonings with LSD, of which isn't present in ergot), but the actual cause was due to consumption of seeds treated with mercury:

The mass poisoning which took place in the French town of Pont-St. Esprit in 1951 has been widely pressented in the lay and scientific press as an example of ergotism. While the poisoning was traced to bread, ergotism was not the cause of the syndrome, which was due to a toxic mercury compound used to disinfect grain to be planted as seed. Some sacks of grain treated with the fungicide were inadvertently ground into flour and baked into bread. Albert Hofmann arrived at this conclusion after visiting Pont-St. Esprit, and analyzing samples of the bread (which contained no ergot alkaloids) and autopsy samples of four of the victims who succumbed (Hofmann 1980; Hofmann 1991). On the other hand, Swedish toxicologist Bo Holmstedt insists the poisoning was in fact due to ergotism (Holmstedt 1978). An American writer published a sensationalized account of the poisoning, The Day of St. Anthony's Fire (Fuller 1968), evoking "the possibility that a strange, spontaneous form of LSD" might have been involved! Fuller was attempting to cash in on the great LSD scare—some of the poisoning victims had jumped from buildings, and this, of course, was a "known" effect of LSD! To be sure, LSD is an artificial compound, and no strain of ergot has been found which "spontaneously" produces LSD.

The city was the scene of a panic due to the mass-poisoning. Historian Steven L. Kaplan thus quoted a newspaper:

"The most incredible versions (versions abracadabrantes) are in circulation. The baker, a former candidate for the RPF [de Gaulle's party], is first accused, then his servant, then the fountains' water, then the modern machines, then foreign powers, then bacteriological war, then the devil, the SNCF, the Pope, Stalin, the Church, nationalizations.

References

John G. Fuller, The Day Of St. Anthony's Fire (New York: The MacMillan Compay, 1968).

External links

Tourism office website

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