EPIDEMIC CONVULSIONS. 503 



been stated, the number who fell was believed to bave reaehed three 

 thousand. 



The " jerks," as they were termed, presented some novel and re- 

 markable features. Their first occurrence is reported to have been at 

 a sacramental meeting in East Tennessee, where several hundred people 

 of both sexes were seized with this strange, convulsive movement. The 

 Rev. B. W. Stone has left a vivid description of it. Sometimes, he 

 says, the subject was affected in a single member of his body, but at 

 others the spasms were universal. When the head alone was affected, 

 it would be jerked from side to side so quickly that the features of the 

 face could not be distinguished. When the whole system was affected, 

 he continues, " I have seen the person stand in one place, and jerk 

 backward and forward in quick succession, the head nearly touching 

 the floor behind and before. All classes, saints and sinners, the strong 

 as well as the weak, were thus affected. I have seen some wicked per- 

 sons thus affected, and all the time cursing the jerks, while they were 

 thrown to the earth with violence." * 



The first form in which these spasmodic movements made their 

 appearance was that of a simple jerking of the arms from the elbow 

 downward. When they involved the entire body, they are described 

 as something terrible to behold. The head was thrown backward and 

 forward with a celerity that alarmed spectators, causing the hair, if it 

 was long, " to crack and snap like the lash of a whip." f 



The most graphic description of the " jerking exercise " was written 

 by the Rev. Richard McNemar, an eye-witness of the frenzy, as well 

 as an apologist, believing it to be a display of Divine favor. In his 

 " History of the Kentucky Revival " he says : " Nothing in nature 

 could better represent this strange and unaccountable operation than 

 for one to goad another, alternately on every side, with a piece of red- 

 hot iron. The exercise commonly began in the head, which would fly 

 backward and forward, and from side to side with a quick jolt, which 

 the person would naturally labor to suppress, but in vain ; and the 

 more any one labored to stay himself, and be sober, the more he stag- 

 gered, and the more his twitches increased. He must necessarily go 

 as he was stimulated, whether with a violent dash on the ground, and 

 bounce from place to place like a foot-ball, or hop round with head, 

 limbs, and trunk twitching and jolting in every direction, as if they 

 must inevitably fly asunder. And how such could escape without in- 

 jury was no small wonder to spectators. By this strange operation 

 the human frame was commonly so transformed and disfigured as to 

 lose every trace of its natural appearance. Sometimes the head would 



* McFerrin's " Methodism in Tennessee." 



f Dr. Davidson, who relates this singular fact, felt it necessary to authenticate the 

 statement by referring to eye- and ear-witnesses of its reality. I remember to have 

 heard my grandmother describe, when I was but a little boy, the same thing as occurring 

 in a woman at a camp-meeting near her home in Tennessee, in 1810. 



