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| View Larger Image | A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials
by Laurie Winn Carlson
| | List Price: | $14.95 | | Price: | $11.96 | | You Save: | $2.99 (20%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 241981 | | Studio: | Ivan R. Dee, Publisher | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 215 | | Publication Date: | August 25, 2000 | | Publisher: | Ivan R. Dee, Publisher |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
This new interpretation of the New England Witch Trials offers an innovative, well-grounded explanation of witchcraft's link to organic illness. While most historians have concentrated on the accused, Laurie Winn Carlson focuses on the afflicted. Systematically comparing the symptoms recorded in colonial diaries and court records to those of the encephalitis epidemic in the early twentieth century, she argues convincingly that the victims suffered from the same disease. A unique blend of historical epidemiology and sociology. --Katrina L. Kelner, Science. Meticulously researched...the author marshalls her arguments with clarity and persuasive force. --New Yorker |
Amazon.com
The 1692 Salem witch trials have made an indelible impression on our national conscience. Investigations into this strange moment in colonial history, when 20 accused witches were executed and over a hundred imprisoned because of their "supernatural" infliction of townsfolk and animals, traditionally focus on the accused. In A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials, Laurie Winn Carlson focuses instead on the afflicted, examining potential natural explanations for their typical symptoms, which included hallucinations, convulsions, psychosis, and frequently death. She provocatively concludes that the witch hunts of New England were a "response to unexplained physical and neurological behaviors resulting from an epidemic of encephalitis." Winn Carlson, an independent scholar based in Washington state, has thoroughly familiarized herself with conventional explanations for the event, which range from the Freudian female neurosis to the sociological community-based socioeconomic problems. In eight methodologically composed chapters, she convincingly illustrates how these fail to account for many relevant facts. Instead, by contrasting the symptoms of 17th-century Massachusetts victims with those in other colonies, in Europe, and in more modern times, Winn Carlson supports her claim for an organic cause. A statistical appendix, maps, and chronology further bolster her theory. Academically rigorous without sounding pedantic, A Fever in Salem offers a refreshing interpretation to both the scholar and the general reader of an event that continues to fascinate. --Bertina Loeffler Sedlack |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 9 reviews)
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Weighed in the Balance and Found Wanting 
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.
March 25, 2006 | |
I am an encephalitis survivor 
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:
December 27, 2003 | |
Comments from a survivor of encephalitis 
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.
October 12, 2003 | |
Under-researched, lacking effort by the writer 
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.
July 23, 2002 | |
Flawed
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.
March 30, 2002 | |
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