Ergot first appeared on the stage of history in the early Middle Ages, as the cause of outbreaks of mass poisonings affecting thousands of persons at a time. The illness, whose connection with ergot was for a long time obscure, appeared in two characteristic forms, one gangrenous (ergotismus gangraenosus) and the other convulsive (ergotismus convulsivus).
1980, Albert Hofmann, chapter 1, in Jonathan Ott, transl., LSD, My Problem Child, McGraw-Hill, archived from the original on 22 May 2016