[j. d. worthington]

It does sound interesting, and I really ought to look it up. I know that there are still plenty of debates about what lay behind the Salem witchcraft panic, and it has long been debunked that it was simply an outbreak of superstitious hysteria but rather had many sociological as well as environmental dimensions which made such a thing almost unavoidable, sooner or later. Add to this the possibility (which has also been hotly disputed by several historians) of ergot poisoning, and you'd really have a nasty cauldron brewing. It is certainly interesting to compare something like this with Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World....