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Salem

2 stories from this place.

The Cabinet June 23, 2026 · Salem Village (modern Danvers), Massachusetts

The Rye Fungus That May Have Made the Salem Girls Convulse in 1692

The standard 17th-century explanation for the Salem witch trials was demonic possession. The standard modern alternative is ergot poisoning from contaminated rye. Both theories have problems. The 1976 paper that revived the ergot theory has been argued about ever since.

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The Cabinet June 23, 2026 · Strasbourg, Alsace (modern France)

The Medical Diagnosis That Connects the Strasbourg Dancers and a Tanganyikan Boarding School

Mass psychogenic illness — the modern medical term for what older eras called collective madness — has been documented continuously across Europe and the rest of the world for at least seven hundred years. The clinical pattern is the same. The cultural framing changes.

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