” that seems much LESS an instance of “fear” and much more one of prosecutorial misconduct, fueled perhaps by zeal or ambition or both.”

It also occurs to me that that though one can be afraid independent of the teachings of one’s religion, that doesn’t mean that all fear or any given instance of fear is independent of religion.

Unless…you can identify what it was that “people” actually were afraid of; demonstrate that this fear was the dominant motive for the event; and show evidence of both of those.

I have not read widely regarding the ‘sex abuse cases,’ by which you presumably mean the day care sex abuse prosecutions. But I have read something of the Fells Acre case in Massachusetts: that seems much an instance of “fear” and much more one of prosecutorial misconduct, fueled perhaps by zeal or ambition or both.

There the fear was framed with “psychotherapy”.

Er… not entirely.

For a modern story of a very similar witch hunt, read widely about the early 1980′s daycare “sex abuse” cases. There the fear was framed with “psychotherapy”. A major difference between the two is that in Salem, some of the feared events actually occurred, perhaps due to ergotism. In the daycare case, the “psychotherapists” invented the events wholesale out of the fear.

From a quick check of several accounts, it seems Cotton Mather was extremely wary of “spectral evidence” not because a witch could not have appeared to a witness in dreams, but because the devil could have taken the shape of an innocent person and appeared to a witness in a dream. Since it would be difficult if not impossible for the witness to distinguish between a real witch and the devil appearing in the dream in the guise of an innocent person seeming to be a witch, spectral evidence was not reliable.

Based on the magazine excerpt cited by Mr. Scaramone, the hypothese put forward is the opposite of “totalizing.” In fact, it doesn’t attempt to “explain” the various events that over the course of a year comprised the “Salem Witch Trials.”

It simply suggests a possible explanation — body chemistry and toxins — for the childrens’ strange behavior, which precipitated those events. What happened afterwards isn’t the result of physiology and chemistry.

I don’t understand what Mr. Melendez means by his last sentence.

Anyways, I long ago read The Day of St Anthony’s Fire by John Grant Fuller which describes what looks like a village wide incident of ergotism in France in the early 1950s. The authorities did not respond very well then, either. And they came up with “scientific” explanations.

I’d say welcome to the human race, Mr. Cox, but I suspect you’ve been with us a long time.

Twenty. As in “20.” As in more people are trampled to death outside Walmart on any given Black Friday.

Given that the entire population of Salem at the time was less than a thousand people, it seems a trifle more significant. If six million people died on Black Friday and one in five people were injured, it might be… noticeable.