Notes on Ergot Poisoning: Red flowers were blossoming from their bodies

Sergei Sharov | The Temptations of St. Anthony | 1969

From The Telegraph.co.ok: French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.

On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.

One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: "I am a plane", before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.

Time magazine wrote at the time: "Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead."

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From Wikipedia: France:

Les cinq hypothèses

Près de soixante ans après les évènements de Pont-Saint-Esprit, on ne sait toujours pas à quoi les attribuer. Cliniquement, les symptômes étaient ceux d'une forme mixte d'ergotisme ou « mal des ardents ».

• L'hypothèse "ergot de seigle" : En 1951, le corps médical avait estimé que le « pain maudit » aurait pu être contaminé par de l'ergot de seigle (Claviceps purpurea), un champignon parasite des graminées. Mais ce diagnostic n'a jamais pu être prouvé.
•  L'hypothèse "Panogen (r)" : On a aussi pensé à une intoxication par le dicyandiamide de métyl-mercure, un produit contenu dans un fongicide ("Panogen (r)") utilisé pour la conservation des grains ayant servi à faire la farine. La justice retient cette hypothèse, mais cette piste a fini par être abandonnée suite à une thèse en pharmacie soutenue en 1965. Elle est également mise en doute par Steven Kaplan.
• L'hypothèse "mycotoxines" : En 1982, le Pr Moreau, toxicologue spécialiste des moisissures, a émis l'hypothèse que l'intoxication de Pont-Saint-Esprit aurait pu provenir de mycotoxines, substances produites par des moisissures pouvant se développer dans les silos à grain. Les effets toxiques des de mycotoxines sont aujourd'hui bien connus en médecine vétérinaire mais étaient quasiment inconnus en 1951.
• L'hypothèse "agène" : Outre l'hypothèse des mycotoxines, Steven Kaplan retient celle d'un blanchiment artificiel du pain à l'aide d'un composé chimique pathogène : l'agène
•  L'hypothèse "LSD 25" : Dans un livre publié aux États-Unis en octobre 2009 et traitant des opérations de la CIA durant la Guerre froide, le journaliste américain Hank P. Albarelli Jr. avance que la CIA aurait testé le LSD comme arme de guerre par pulvérisation aérienne sur la population spiripontaine. Dans son n°559 du 18 février 2010, l'hebdomadaire nîmois La Gazette fait état de cette thèse, suivi par d'autres médias. Les hallucinations qui accompagnent les convulsions de l'ergotisme sont similaires à celle déclenchées par le LSD (l'acide lysergique, base du LSD, est synthétisé à partir de l'ergot de seigle). La faille de cette hypothèse est que le LSD ne donne pas de troubles digestifs (nausées, brûlures d'estomac, vomissements).

Kyosai | Jigoku Dayu (The Hell Courtesan) | 1874

From Shoa Planetaire:

Un journal français écrivait à l’époque des événements bizarres : « Ce n’est ni du Shakespeare, ni de l’Edgar Poe. C’est hélas la triste réalité tout autour de Pont-Saint-Esprit et de ses environs, où se déroulent des scènes d’hallucinations terrifiantes. Ce sont des scènes tout droit sorties du Moyen Âge, des scènes d’horreur et de pathos, pleines d’ombres sinistres. » Le magazine étasunien Time, dont l’éditeur Henry Luce était étroitement lié aux activités de propagande de la CIA dans les années 50, écrivait : « Parmi les affligés, grandissait le délire : les patients se débattaient sauvagement sur leur lit, en hurlant que des fleurs rouges s’épanouissaient sur leur corps, que leurs têtes se transformaient en plomb fondu. L’hôpital de Pont-Saint-Esprit a signalé quatre tentatives de suicide. »

Matthias Grünewald | St. Anthony Visiting St. Paul the Hermit in the Desert | 1512-1516

From the informative and fascinating Ergot of Rye: History:

Due to the cold and wet years that occurred in 1348-50, in certain areas of Europe, grain crops, which were the staple for Europe at this time, were thought to have been contaminated with T-2 or related toxins that damaged the immune systems of both rats and humans. The damage to the immune systems of both rats and human is is believed to be one the contributing factors that led to the high mortality during the Bubonic Plague. However, other causes of depressed immune systems, other than fungal in origin, may also have occurred at this time.

When the greatest mortality due to the Bubonic Plague had passed, areas that were hard hit with the plague did not recover. This puzzled historians, although there were still some incidents of famine and diseases, after the plague, generally there was not a lack of food nor a great deal of disease since the populations in many areas had been drastically reduced by the plague. However, there was still a population depression even a generation after the plague, and longer . Populations in many areas had still not reached levels that were present before the plague. After the plague, the winters were unusually cold. This affected the diet of the poor more than the wealthy. In those years where the winters were cooler, Rye would be more likely to survive than wheat. This made it more likely that Rye would be consumed, and while the Rye survived the cold temperatures, the plants were traumatized and were more susceptible to infections by Ergot. Evidence that Ergot poisoning was occurring was based on reports of nervous system disorders. In summer of 1355, there was an epidemic of “madness” in England. People believed that they saw demons. In 1374, a wet year, marked by a lack of food, there was an outbreak of hallucinations, convulsions and compulsive dancing in the Rhineland. Some people imagined they were drowning in a stream of blood. In addition to nervous system disorders such as those described above, Ergot poisoning is also known to reduce fertility and cause spontaneous abortions. With the greater consumption of Rye, coupled with consumption of grains infected with T-2 and related mycotoxin that is believed to have shortened the consumer's life span by compromising their immune system, were possibly the reason for the population depression during this period of time. It would not be until almost the 15th. Century that an upward trend in population would begin. [...]

Temptations of Saint Anthony | Martin Schongauer | 1470s

Ergotism occurred in 1926-27 in Russia, with 10,000 reported cases, in England in 1927, with 200 cases, among central European Jewish immigrants and the last known example occurred on August 12, 1951. On that day, Jean Vieu, a medical doctor in the little town of Pont-St. Esprit, in Provence, France, was the first to discover the outbreak while puzzling over two cases of patients who complained of intense pain in the lower abdomen. At first Dr. Vieu believed these cases to be acute appendicitis, but the symptoms that his patience exhibited were not those of this particular ailment. Instead, Some of these symptoms included low body temperatures and cold fingertips. Even stranger were the wild babbling and hallucinations. By August 13th., Dr. Vieu had a third patience with these symptoms. His concern of these patients led him to meet with two other colleagues and together, the three doctors had twenty patients with the symptoms just described.

By August 14th., the town's hospital was now filled with more patients with the same symptoms and 70 homes were required as emergency wards. When possible, victims were tied to their beds, those that escaped were running mad and frantic through the streets. All available strait jackets were rushed to the town to restrain the victims of this sickness. If there were any town's people of Pont-St.-Esprit that were not terrified by this time, they became so when they learned of a demented, eleven year old boy, who had tried to strangle his own mother. Paranoia soon spread throughout the town, rumors soon spread that this wave of dementia was due to a mass poisoning that had been carried out by the local authorities.

Meanwhile, the doctors, were working diligently to discover the cause of this dementia. That this was caused by some sort of food poisoning, they were certain. However, what had all these people consumed? The doctors searched the houses of the afflicted and found only one common food item. All the victims had consumed wheat bread from the same baker. Samples of the bread were taken and sent to Marseilles. When the results from the analysis of the bread samples were completed, tests indicated that it contained approximately twenty alkaloid poisons, and that they had all apparently came from the same source. The origin of the alkaloids was identified as those belonging to the fungus causing ergot of the rye plant.

It would be four more weeks before the whole story concerning the contamination of the bread would unfold. Beyond the Auvergne Mountains, where wheat is grown, an unethical farmer had apparently sold contaminated rye grain to a miller who had mixed it with wheat and grounded it into flower. The miller then shipped the flour to Pont-St.-Esprit, to the baker who was also collaborating with the farmer and miller. It was their greed that was responsible for over two hundred cases of alkaloid poisoning, thirty two cases of insanity and four deaths.

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From the 1951 article in The British Medical Journal: Ergot Poisoning at Pont St. Esprit (.pdf):

Logorrhoea, psychomotor agitation, and absolute insomnia always presaged the appearance of mental disorders. Towards evening visual hallucinations appeared, recalling those of alcoholism. The particular themes were visions of animals and of flames. All these visions were fleeting and variable. In many of the patients they were followed by dreamy delirium. The delirium seemed to be systematized, with animal hallucinations and self-accusation, and it was sometimes mystical or macabre. In some cases terrifying visions were followed by-fugues, and two patients even threw themselves out of windows. The delirium was of a confusional kind which could be interrupted for some moments by strong stimulation. Every attempt at restraint increased the agitation. In severe cases muscular spasms appeared, recalling those of tetanus,but seeming to be less sustained and less painful. During this stage, sweating was abundant, and the temperature somewhat raised. The duration of these periods of delirium was very varied. They lasted several hours in been treated and four cases of the latter. In some patients, in others they still persist.

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From the PBS Series: Secrets of the Dead: The Witches Curse:

When Linnda Caporael began nosing into the Salem witch trials as a college student in the early 1970s, she had no idea that a common grain fungus might be responsible for the terrible events of 1692. But then the pieces began to fall into place. Caporael, now a behavioral psychologist at New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, soon noticed a link between the strange symptoms reported by Salem's accusers, chiefly eight young women, and the hallucinogenic effects of drugs like LSD. LSD is a derivative of ergot, a fungus that affects rye grain. Ergotism -- ergot poisoning -- had indeed been implicated in other outbreaks of bizarre behavior, such as the one that afflicted the small French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951.

But could ergot actually have been the culprit? Did it have the means and the opportunity to wreak havoc in Salem? Caporael's sleuthing, with the help of science, provided the answers. 

Ergotism is caused by the fungus Claviceps purpurea, which affects rye, wheat and other cereal grasses. When first infected, the flowering head of a grain will spew out sweet, yellow-colored mucus, called "honey dew," which contains fungal spores that can spread the disease. Eventually, the fungus invades the developing kernels of grain, taking them over with a network of filaments that turn the grains into purplish-black sclerotia. Sclerotia can be mistaken for large, discolored grains of rye. Within them are potent chemicals: ergot alkaloids, including lysergic acid (from which LSD is made) and ergotamine (now used to treat migraine headaches). The alkaloids affect the central nervous system and cause the contraction of smooth muscle -- the muscles that make up the walls of veins and arteries, as well as the internal organs.

Toxicologists now know that eating ergot-contaminated food can lead to a convulsive disorder characterized by violent muscle spasms, vomiting, delusions, hallucinations, crawling sensations on the skin, and a host of other symptoms -- all of which, Linnda Caporael noted, are present in the records of the Salem witchcraft trials. Ergot thrives in warm, damp, rainy springs and summers. When Caporael examined the diaries of Salem residents, she found that those exact conditions had been present in 1691. Nearly all of the accusers lived in the western section of Salem village, a region of swampy meadows that would have been prime breeding ground for the fungus. At that time, rye was the staple grain of Salem. The rye crop consumed in the winter of 1691-1692 -- when the first unusual symptoms began to be reported -- could easily have been contaminated by large quantities of ergot. The summer of 1692, however, was dry, which could explain the abrupt end of the "bewitchments." These and other clues built up into a circumstantial case against ergot that Caporael found impossible to ignore. 

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From the New York Times, October 22, 1998:

DELAIN, France, Oct. 21 - An exorcist has been called in to rid the Delain village church of devils, which he said had sent candlesticks flying, forcing ecclesiastical authorities to close the building until further notice.

The exorcist, the Rev. Max de Wasseige, who was called in by the Archbishop of Besancon to drive out the devils, said, ''I saw candlesticks flying about with my own eyes.''

The trouble began last Thursday in this village in eastern France when volunteers moved the altar by a few inches to make more space for a visiting symphony orchestra.

Witnesses said afterward that a candle went flying, splitting in two, and that statuettes and vases were broken inexplicably. Also the altar was moved by four inches, apparently unaided.

The Mayor of Delain, Thierry Marceaux, said, ''There was no collective hallucination, or 50 people will have to be sent to the lunatic asylum.''

He said that the orchestra gave its concert normally on Sunday, but that the devils resumed their work on Monday, even though the altar had been put back in its place.

The Roman Catholic Church, like many Christian churches, teaches that the Devil is real and evil spirits exist. But modern theologians have been playing down Satan's influence as they have accepted psychological and psychiatric explanations of abnormal behavior.

Niklaus Manuel | Temptation of Saint Anthony | 1520

Thanks to Tiffany for the lead.

A frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.

DEPOSITION: Testimony Concerning A Sickness by William S. Burroughs

I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness. . . . Most survivors do not remember the delirium in detail. I apparently took detailed notes on sickness and delirium. I have no precise memory of writing the notes which have now been published under the title _Naked_Lunch_. The title was suggested by Jack Kerouac. I did not understand what the title meant until my recent recovery. The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch--a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.

The Sickness is drug addiction and I was an addict for fifteen years. When I say addict I mean an addict to junk (generic term for opium and/or derivatives including all synthetics from demerol to palfium. I have used junk in many forms: morphine, heroin, delaudid, eukodal, pantopon, diocodid, diosane, opium, demerol, dolophine, palfium. I have smoked junk, eaten it, sniffed it, injected in in vein-skin-muscle, inserted it in rectal suppositories. The needle is not important. Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction. When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Bannisteria Caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drugs of the hallucinogen group. . . . There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. The action of these drugs is physiologically opposite to the action of junk. A lamentable confusion between the two classes of drugs has arisen owing to the zeal of the U.S. and other narcotic departments.

I have seen the exact manner in which the junk virus operates through fifteen years of addiction. The pyramid of junk, one level eating the level below (it is no accident that junk higher-ups are always fat and the addict in the street is always thin) right up to the top or tops since there are many junk pyramids feeding on peoples of the world and all built on basic principles of monopoly:

1--Never give anything away for nothing.

2--Never give more than you have to give

(always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait).

3--Always take everything back if you possibly can.

The Pusher always gets it all back. The addict needs more and more junk to maintain a human form . . . buy off the Monkey.

Junk is the mold of monopoly and possession. The addict stands by while his junk legs carry him straight in on the junk beam to relapse. Junk is quantitative and accurately measurable. The more junk you use the less you have and the more you have the more you use. All the hallucinogen drugs are considered sacred by those who use them--there are Peyote Cults and Bannisteria Cults, Hashish Cults and Mushroom Cults--``the Scared Mushrooms of Mexico enable a man to see God''--but no on ever suggested that junk is sacred. There are no opium cults. Opium is profane and quantitative like money. I have heard that there was one a bbeneficentnon-habit-forming junk in India. It was called *soma* and is pictured as a beautiful blue tide. If *soma* ever existed the Pusher was there to bottle it and monopolize it and sell it and it turned into plain old time JUNK.

Junk is the ideal product . . . the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. . . . The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. He pays his staff in junk.

Junk yields a basic formula of ``evil'' virus: *The Algebra of Need*. The face of ``evil'' is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: ``*Wouldn't you*?'' Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do *anything* to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite. Assuming a self-righteous position is nothing to the purpose unless your purpose be to keep the junk virus in operation. And junk in a big industry. I recall talking to an American who worked for the Aftosa Commission in Mexico. Six hundred a month plus expense account: ``How long will the epidemic last?'' I enquired. ``As long as we can keep it going. . . . And yes . . . maybe the aftosa will break out in South America,'' he said dreamily.

If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: *the Addict in the Street*, and stop tilting quixotically for the ``higher ups'' so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. ** The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation **. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it.

Addicts can be cured or quarantined--that is, allowed a morphine ration under minimal supervision like typhoid carriers. When this is done, junk pyramids of the world will collapse. So far as I know, England is the only country to apply this method to the junk problem. They have about five hundred quarantined addicts in the U.K. In another generation when the quarantined addicts die off and pain killers operating on a non-junk principle are discovered, the junk virus will be like smallpox, a closed chapter--a medical curiosity.

The vaccine that can relegate the junk virus to a land-locked past is in existence. This vaccine is the Apomorphine Treatment discovered by an English doctor whose name I must withhold pending his permission to use it and to quote from his book covering thirty years of apomorphine treatment of addicts and alcoholics. The compound apomorphine is formed by boiling morphine with hydrochloric acid. It was discovered years before it was used to treat addicts. For many years the only use for apomorphine which has no narcotic or pain-killing properties was as an emetic to induce vomiting in cases of poisoning. It acts directly on the vomiting center in the back brain.

I found this vaccine at the end of the junk line. I lived in one room in the Native Quarter of Tangier. I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of terminal addiction. I never cleaned or dusted the room. Empty ampule boxes and garbage piled up to the ceiling. Light and water long since turned off for non-payment. I did absolutely nothing. I could look at the end of my shoe for eight hours. I was only roused to action when the hourglass of junk ran out. If a friend came to visit--and they rarely did since who or what was left to visit--I sat there not caring that he had entered my field of vision--a grey screen always blanker and fainter--and not caring when he walked out of it. If he had died on the spot I would have sat there looking at my shoe waiting to go through his pockets. Wouldn't you? Because I never had enough junk--no one ever does. Thirty grains of morphine a day and it still was not enough. And long waits in front of the drugstore. Delay is a rule in the junk business. The Man is never on time. This is no accident. There are no accidents in the junk world. The addict is taught again and again exactly what will happen if he does not score for his junk ration. Get up that money or else. And suddenly my habit began to jump and jump. Forty, sixty grains a day. And it still was not enough. And I could not pay.

I stood there with my last check in my hand and realized that it was my last check. I took the next plane for London.

The doctor explained to me that apomorphine acts on the back brain to regulate the metabolism and normalize the blood stream in such a way that the enzyme system of addiction is destroyed over a period of four or five days. Once the back brain is regulated apomorphine can be discontinued and only used in case of relapse. (No one would take apomorphine for kicks. ** Not one case of addiction to apomorphine has ever been recorded.**) I agreed to undergo treatment and entered a nursing home. For the first twenty-four hours I was literally insane and paranoid as many addicts are in severe withdrawal. This delirium was dispersed by twenty-four hours of intensive apomorphine treatment. The doctor showed me the chart. I had received minute amounts of morphine that could not possibly account for my lack of the more severe withdrawal symptoms such as leg and stomach cramps, fever and my own special symptom, The Cold Burn, like a vast hive covering the body and rubbed with menthol. Every addict has his own special symptom that cracks all control. There was a missing factor in the withdrawal equation--that factor could only be apomorphine.

I saw the apomorphine treatment really work. Eight days later I left the nursing home eating and sleeping normally. I remained completely off junk for two full years--a twelve year record. I did relapse for some months as a result of pain and illness. Another apomorphine cure has kept me off junk through this writing.

The apomorphine cure is qualitatively different from other methods of cure. I have tried them all. Short reduction, slow reduction, cortisone, antihistamines, tranquilizers, sleeping cures, tolserol, reserpine. None of these cures lasted beyond the first opportunity to relapse. I can say definitely that I was never *metabolically* cured until I took the apomorphine cure. The overwhelming relapse statistics from the Lexington Narcotic Hospital have led many doctors to say that addiction is not curable. They use a dolophine reduction cure at Lexington and have never tried apomorphine so far as I know. In fact, this method of treatment has been largely neglected. No research has been done with variations of the apomorphine formula or with synthetics. No doubt substances fifty times stronger than apomorphine could be developed and the side effect of vomiting eliminated.

Apomorphine is a metabolic and psychic regulator that can be discontinued as soon as it has done its work. The world is deluged with tranquilizers and energizers but this unique regulator has not received attention. No research has been done by any of the large pharmaceutical companies. I suggest that research with variations of apomorphine and synthesis of it will open a new medical frontier extending far beyond the problem of addiction.

The smallpox vaccine was opposed by a vociferous lunatic group of anti-vaccinationists. No doubt a scream of protest will go up from interested or unbalanced individuals as the junk virus is shot out from under them. Junk is big business; there are always cranks and operators. They must not be allowed to interfere with the essential work of inoculation treatment and quarantine. ** The junk virus is public health problem number one of the world today.**

Since _Naked_Lunch_ treats this health problem, it is necessarily brutal, obscene and disgusting. Sickness is often repulsive details not for weak stomaches.

Certain passages in the book that have been called pornographic were written as a tract against Capital Punishment in the manner of Jonathan Swift's _Modest_Proposal_. These sections are intended to reveal capital punishment as the obscene, barbaric and disgusting anachronism that it is. As always the lunch is naked. If civilized countries want to return to Druid Hanging Rites in the Sacred Grove or to drink blood with the Aztecs and feed their Gods with blood of human sacrifice, let them see what is on the end of that long newspaper spoon.

I have almost completed a sequel to _Naked_Lunch_. A mathematical extension of the Algebra of Need beyond the junk virus. Because there are many forms of addiction I think that they all obey basic laws. In the words of Heiderberg: ``This may not be the best of all possible universes but it may well prove to be one of the simplest.'' If man can *see*.

Post Script. . . . Wouldn't You?

And speaking *Personally* and if a man speaks any other way we might as well start looking for his Protoplasm Daddy or Mother Cell. . . . *I Don't Want To Hear Any More Tired Old Junk Talk And Junk Con.* . . . The same things said a million times and more and there is no point in saying anything because NOTHING *Ever Happens* in the junk world.

Only excuse for this tired death route is THE KICK when the junk circuit is cut off for the non-payment and the junk-skin dies of junk-lack and overdose of time and the Old Skin has forgotten the skin game simplifying a way under the junk cover the way skins will. . . . A condition of total exposure is precipitated when the Kicking Addict cannot choose but see smell and listen. . . . Watch out for the cars. . . .

It is clear that junk is a Round-the-World-Push-an-Opium-Pellet-with- Your-Nose-Route. Strictly for Scarabs--stumble bum junk heap. And as such report to disposal. Tired of seeing it around.

Junkies always beef about *The Cold* as they call it, turning up their black coat collars and clutching their withered necks . . . pure junk con. A junky does not want to be warm, he want to Cool-Cooler-COLD. But he want The Cold like he want His Junk--NOT OUTSIDE where it does him no good but INSIDE so he can sit around with a spine like a frozen hydraulic jack . . . his metabolism approaching Absolute ZERO. TERMINAL addicts often go two months without a bowel move and the intestines make with sit-down-adhesions --Wouldn't You--requiring the intervention of an apple corer or its surgical equivalent. . . . Such is life in The Old Ice House. Why move around and waste TIME?

Room for One More Inside, Sir.

Some entities are on thermodynamic kicks. They invented thermodynamics. . . . Wouldn't you?

And some of us are on Different Kicks and that's a thing out in the open the way I like to see what I eat and visa versa mutatis mutandis as the case may be. *Bill's Naked Lunch Room*. . . Step right up. . . Good for young and old, man and bestial. Nothing like a little snake oil to grease the wheels and get a show on the track Jack. Which side are you on? Fro-Zen Hydraulic? Or you want to take a look around with Honest Bill?

So that's the World Health Problem I was talking about back in The Article. The Prospect Before Us Friends of MINE. Do I hear muttering about a personal razor and some bush league short con artist who is known to have invented The Bill? Wouldn't You? The razor belonged to a man named Occam and he was not a scar collector. Ludwig Wittgenstein _Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_: ``If a proposition is NOT NECESSARY is it MEANINGLESS and approaching MEANING ZERO.''

``And what is More UNNECESSARY than junk if You Don't Need it?

*Answer*: ``Junkies, if you are not ON JUNK.''

I tell you boys, I've heard some tired conversation but no other OCCUPATION GROUP can approximate that old thermodynamic junk Slow-DOWN. Now your heroin addict does not say hardly anything and that I can stand. But your Opium ``Smoker'' is more active since he still has a tent and a Lamp . . . and maybe 7-9-10 lying up in there like hibernating reptiles keep the temperature up to Talking Level: How low the other junkies are ``whereas We--WE have this tent and this lamp and this tent and this lamp and this tent and nice and warm in here nice and warm nice and IN HERE and nice and OUTSIDE ITS COLD. . . . ITS COLD OUTSIDE where the dross eaters and the needle boys won't last two years not six months hardly won't last stumble bum around and there is no class in them. . . . But WE SIT HERE and never increase the DOSE . . . never-never increase the dose never except TONIGHT is a SPECIAL OCCASION with all the dross eaters and needle boys out there in the cold. . . . And we never eat it never never never eat it. . . . Excuse please while I take a trip to The Source Of Living Drops they all have in pocket and opium pellets shoved up the ass in a finger stall with the Family Jewels and the other shit.

Room for one more inside, Sir.

Well when that record starts around for the billionth light year and never the tape shall change us non-junkies take drastic action and the men separate out from the Junk boys.

Only way to protect yourself against this horrid peril is come over HERE and shack up with Charybdis. . . . Treat you right kid. . . . Candy and cigarettes.

I am after fifteen years in that tent. In and out in and out in and OUT. *Over* and *Out*. So listen to Old Uncle Bill Burroughs who invented the Burroughs Adding Machine Regulator Gimmick on the Hydraulic Jack Principle no matter how you jerk the handle result is always the same for given co-ordinates. Got my training early . . . wouldn't you?

Paregoric Babies of the World Unite. We have nothing to lose but Our Pushers. And THEY are NOT NECESSARY.

Look down LOOK DOWN along that junk road before you travel there and get in with the Wrong Mob. . . .

A word to the wise guy.

William S. Burroughs