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ballads. A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials.
By Laurie Winn Carlson. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1999. Pp. xiii, 197. ...
... Both poems are similar in that they are ballads, they rhyme, and they both end in
tragedy; however the tragic outcomes for each of the stories characters are ...
Submitted by gamecock06 on April 10, 2005
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A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials. By Laurie Winn Carlson. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1999. Pp. xiii, 197. $24.95.)
The author of this book has proposed an intriguing hypothesis regarding the seventeenth-century witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Laurie Winn Carlson argues that accusations of witchcraft were linked to an epidemic of encephalitis and that it was a specific form of this disease, encephalitis lethargica, that accounts for the symptoms suffered by the afflicted, those who accused their neighbors of bewitching them. Though this interpretation of the Salem episode is fascinating, the book itself is extremely problematic, fraught with historical errors, inconsistencies, contradictions, conjecture, and a very selective use of the evidence.
Carlson begins her study with the theory that the afflicted among Salem's residents exhibited symptoms identical to those of individuals infected during the worldwide epidemic of encephalitis lethargica of the 1920s. She insists that "victims had nothing to gain" from coming forward to make their accusations, so that their torment must have been real; a bold statement, but one based on the author's opinion alone (27). Carlson tends to dismiss or simply fails to mention any material that does not neatly fit her theory. Any evidence that points to the fact that the afflicted girls were anything more than hapless victims of a virulent disease is not addressed. In fact, there is quite a bit of material from the testimonies produced at the trials of reputed witches that raises doubts about the accusers. But, Carlson sees clear proof of encephalitis lethargica everywhere, as in the case of a young English girl who "had an experience similar to sufferers in New England---obviously a case of encephalitis lethargica" (130).
Although the factual errors contained in this book are problematic (according to Carlson, John Winthrop,...
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