In 1951, the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit was affected by what was thought to have been either an outbreak of botul­ism from contaminated wheat or poisoning from seeds treated with mercury. (There is a brief Wiki­pedia entry on the event.) Four (or was it seven?) people died, hundreds were hospitalised and some went mad. HP Albarelli Jnr offers another explanation: the CIA used the village to try out LSD on a large group of people. The experiment was just one of many the Agency had been conducting using LSD and other chemicals. Among the Americans involved in the project was a biochemist called Frank Olsen.