174 TH^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Although called "Jumpers," they only jumjy in a minority of the 

 experiments, the word jumping really including all such jDhenomena as 

 lifting the shoulders, raising the hands, striking, throwing, crying, and 

 tumbling. Jumpers have been known to fall head over heels over an 

 embankment on which they were sitting, on suddenly hearing the 

 whistle of a locomotive ; they have been known to tumble head over 

 heels over one another, when a number of them were sitting near each 

 other. 



The order to " drop it " they are compelled to obey, as well as that 

 to strike or to jump or to throw. On one of the steamers on the Range- 

 ley Lakes there was a waiter who was a Jumper, and when told to " drop 

 it " he would drop whatever he had in his hands, even if it were a 

 plate of baked beans, on the head of one of the guests. The Jumpers 

 with whom I experimented exhibited the same phenomena. 



These phenomena suggest epilepsy, particularly in their explosive 

 character and in the nature of the cry. The hands strike or throw 

 with a quick, impulsive movement, which is very hard to imitate arti- 

 ficially. They go off like a piece of machineiy ; it is more like the 

 explosion of a gun than the movement of the limbs of even an angry 

 man ; and the cry suggests that which we hear in hysteria and in 

 epilepsy. The face does not always exhibit any change, but in some 

 cases there is a temporary flushing, and in others a temporary pallor. 



All the Jumpers agree that it tires them to be very much jumped ; 

 that they feel worse after it, more or less exhausted and nervous ; 

 they all dislike to be jumped, and avoid it when it is possible ; the 

 more they are jumped the worse they are ; and that after a while in 

 the woods, where they are constantly teased and annoyed after the 

 day's labor is over, they are made worse ; whereas, after long periods 

 of rest they become better, are less irritable and jump less, and do not 

 jumj) so easily on excitement. 



Nature of this Disease. "What, now, is the pathology of this 

 jumping ? How are we to rank these phenomena among the neuroses ? 

 What relation do they bear to the great family of di^ases ? Are they 

 functional or structural ? Are they physical or psychical ? The answer 

 is clear : jumping is a psychical or mental form of nervous disease, 

 and is of a functional character. Its best analogue is jisychical or 

 mental hysteria, the so-called " servant-girl hysteria," as known to us 

 in modern days, and as very widely known during the epidemics of 

 the middle ages. Like mental or psychical hysteria, this jumping 

 occurs not in the weak, or the nervous, or the angemic, but in those, 

 as a rule, in at least good if not firm and unusual health ; there are no 

 stronger men in the woods, or anywhere, than some of these Jumjiers. 

 Although some of them are injured by being excessively jumped for 

 the time at least, yet to the majority, if not nearly all, this injury can 

 not be said to be of a serious character. It does not apparently shorten 

 life, and does not bring on, so far as I can learn, any other form of 



