After doing some research on the Salem Witch Trail's I came across some different theories of why these girls started acting the way they did. Rumors of witch craft and curses were the cause of the trials in the first place but what if these actions had another cause and all those people were innocent? I came across the article Witchcraft or Mycotoxin? The Salem Witch Trials. It's from the Academic Journal of Toxicology and can be found when searching the Academic Search Premier database. This article describes research done showing that the reason the girls started acting in these odd ways may not have anything to do with witchcraft after all. Ergot poisoning among livestock was a huge concern in the 1600's and could have been the reason for these odd behaviors. The article goes into more details of symptoms of known people who have been affected by eating affected livestock and how these symptoms are very similar to those of the girls in Salem.
All of the sources that I found while doing my research had something to do with the trials and most of them were academic journals. Almost every article I read also had a little summary of the Salem Witch Trial's at the beginning. Besides these few similarities, all the articles I found were completely different. There was some comparing the trials to Harry Potter.Others talked about the gender roles in the Trials; which I will be looking more into for my final paper.I really like this source and recommend it to others interested in learning more about the Salem Witch Trail's because it puts a modern twist on why the people sentenced to death were innocent. It's a credible source because it's a journal from Harvard Medical School if Clinical Toxicology and was published on June 1, 2000.
Great source review! This is a fascinating angle on the trials. I like your comparison of the various articles you found, and how they all begin with a little summary of the events. Nice post!
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