The Mystery in the Rye

The non-fiction book offers a captivating insight into the history and medical significance of the dreaded ergot. The range extends from early medical writings from Mesopotamia, Greece and China to the industrial and academic laboratories of pharmaceutical research in the 20th century. Over 1,000 years, the highly active ingredients of the plant-pathogenic fungus caused horrific mass poisonings in Europe. The book sheds light on how the Antonite Order was formed to exclusively care for people suffering from ergotism and how doctors explained the connections between the ergot fungus and poisoning via rye-based foods. What is particularly fascinating is the illustration of how pharmaceutical natural product research finally managed to develop drugs from the isolated active ingredients of ergot that became essential for the modernization of medicine. This part of history shows how significant advances in human health were made from the darkness of the Middle Ages. Another highlight of the book is the discussion of how this work gave rise to LSD, which became so important for the elucidation of the chemical basis of the psyche and the beginning of psychopharmacology.