Why did the inhabitants of the south of France massively lose their minds in 1951?
More than 70 years ago life flowed calmly and steadily in a small village in the south of France. Pont-Saint-Esprit at that time numbered about four and a half thousand inhabitants, who almost all knew each other. A neat little town on the banks of the Rhone River used to have peaceful pastime. But one far from perfect day everything changed. At that moment, it seemed that almost the entire city had gone crazy at the same time. And it was not at all figuratively, but in the most direct sense of the word.
Mass insanity
In the middle of the last century, the quiet town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in the Gard department in southern France had a life of its own. Provincial life went on as usual, children played on the streets, ladies walked slowly, someone was in a hurry about their business. It was impossible not to meet one of the acquaintances leaving the house, because everyone was to each other, if not relatives, then friends or at least just friends.
However, everything changed in mid-August 1951. It was then that residents of the city began to turn to doctors with very unusual complaints. The first three patients, while seemingly asymptomatic, complained of being devoured by flames. Subsequently, people began to complain about hallucinations in different places in the south-west of France, but the city of Pont-Saint-Esprit turned out to be the epicenter of the strange phenomenon.
Here, the scale of hallucinogenic phenomena was truly catastrophic. More than 250 only official cases of complaints of strange visions with simultaneous pains in the abdomen were registered. Patients were delirious; they suffered from terrible hallucinations that provoke outbreaks of violence. Among the patients were not only adults, but also children. At the same time, there were some deaths: one person jumped out of the window, because he thought he was a plane; and the second victim was a woman who was killed by her own son. Some sources speak of five dead and 500 injured.
The night of August 25-26 is still called "the night of the apocalypse" and is remembered as the most terrible time in the history of the city. The hallucinations seemed very realistic, and people tried to escape from their nightmares in every possible way. But it often ended in injuries. People were sent en masse to hospitals and psychiatric clinics. Sometimes recovery occurred after a few days, but some patients subsequently underwent treatment for several months.
Different versions of what happened
At that time, a variety of versions were put forward about the causes of what happened, the townspeople actively discussed them and looked for those to blame. Numerous theories have also been voiced in the media. They blamed the water from the fountains, the baker, suspected the use of bacteriological weapons, blamed modern technology and equipment, and with them foreign agents, the Pope, the CIA, stalin, and even the Church.
As a result, unintentional poisoning of bread was taken as the main and official version. Allegedly, a local baker used flour contaminated with ergot, a fungus that parasitizes cereal crops. A miller who supplied local bakeries with flour also came under suspicion. He was accused of adding ryegrass (herbaceous cereal plants) to the flour, again infected with ergot. After the autopsy of the bodies of the dead, ergot poisoning, according to the official version, was confirmed.
The baker and the miller were arrested, as this was the only way to save them from angry residents who were about to arrange lynching. But many of them were not at all inclined to trust the conclusions of the official investigation. Rumors about witchcraft, worldwide conspiracy and other reasons that led to such a terrible ending were spreading more and more actively in the city.
They tried to calm the residents by giving examples from the past, when similar cases in history were associated with ergot poisoning, which causes ergotism syndrome, accompanied by mental disorders, pain, and aggression. Severe intoxication is quite capable of leading to death. Even the official conclusion given by the toxicological laboratory of Marseille did not become the ultimate truth for some citizens.
But in the end, the miller confessed himself to the police: he used spoiled rye flour, adding it to wheat, trying to save a couple of thousand francs. It was this rye that turned out to be infected with ergot, and therefore eating bread caused the most severe intoxication and hallucinations, which led to dire consequences in Pont-Saint-Esprit, because it was there that most of the “bad” flour was delivered. And even this option convinced not everyone, especially since the reason for intoxication was not indicated in the court verdict.
The new time investigation
History professor Stephen Kapplan has been studying "cursed bread" already in the 21st century. In 2008, he came to an unequivocal conclusion: the official version did not become true at all, and the secret of mass psychosis remained unsolved.
In 2009, a real scandal erupted. American journalist H. P. Albarelli, in the course of his own investigation, discovered documents that directly indicate that in 1951 the CIA conducted a secret mind control experiment, during which they studied the effects of LSD on people. Initially, the investigation into the events in Pont-Saint-Esprit was conducted by the Sandoz company, which was engaged in the supply of LSD to the CIA.
A meticulous journalist found among the numerous materials on this case a transcript of a conversation between a CIA agent and a Sandoz representative, who discussed events in a French town. It was the Sandoz employee who mentioned that the mass hallucinations and psychosis were caused by LSD. Separately, Albarelli drew attention to a document that came out of the White House and sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission to assist in the investigation of CIA abuses.
It is in this document that you can see which of the French figures worked for the CIA, and their reports directly mention Pont-Saint-Esprit. And the inhabitants of the town still insist on an honest investigation that could provide truthful answers to many questions regarding a rather terrible page in the history of Pont-Saint-Esprit.
Among the numerous versions of what happened in 1951, there were accusations against the soviet union as well.
