18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



companies it, predispose very greatly indeed to the violent excitement 

 of the feelings, and to the possession of the mind by ideas which we 

 regard as essentially absurd ; and under these states of excitement of 

 feeling, and the tendency of these dominant ideas to acquire posses- 

 sion of the intellect, the strangest aberrations take place, not only in 

 individuals but in communities ; and it is of such that I have especial- 

 ly to speak to-night. We know perfectly well, in our individual ex- 

 perience, that these states tend to produce insanity if they are indulged 

 in, and if the individual does not make an earnest effort to free him- 

 self from their influence. But, looking back at the history of the 

 earlier ages, and carrying that survey down to the present time, we 

 have experience in all ages of great masses of people being seized upon 

 by these dominant ideas, accompanied with the excitement of some 

 passion or strong impulse which leads to the most absurd results ; and 

 it is of these Epidemic Delusions I have to now speak. The word 

 " epidemic " simply means something that falls upon, as it were, the 

 great mass of the people a delusion which affects the popular mind. 

 And I believe that I can best introduce the subject to you by showing 

 you how, in certain merely physical conditions, mere bodily states, 

 there is a tendency to the propagation, by what is commonly called 

 imitation, of very strange actions of the nervous system. I suppose 

 there is no one of you who does not know what an hysteric fit means, 

 a kind of fit to which young women are especially subject, but which 

 affects the male sex also. One reason why young women are particu- 

 larly subject to it is, that in the female the feelings are more easily 

 excited, while the male generally has a less mobile nervous system, his 

 feelings being less easily moved, while he is more influenced by the 

 intellect. These hysteric fits are generally brought on by something 

 that strongly affects the feelings. Now, it often happens that a case 

 of this sort presents itself in a school or nunnery, sometimes in a fac- 

 tory where a number of young women are collected together; one 

 being seized with a fit, others will go off in a fit of a very similar kind. 

 There was an instance a good many years ago in a factory in a country 

 town in Lancashire, in which a young girl was attacked with a violent 

 convulsive fit, brought on by alarm, consequent upon "one of her com- 

 panions, a factory operative, putting a mouse down inside her dress. 

 The girl had a particular antipathy to mice, and the sudden shock 

 threw her into a violent fit. Some of the other girls who were near 

 very soon passed off into a similar fit ; and then there got to be a no- 

 tion that these fits were produced by some emanations from a bale of 

 cotton ; and the consequence was that they spread, till scores of the 

 young women were attacked day after day with these violent fits. 

 The medical man who was called in saw at once what the state of 

 things was ; he assured them in the first place that this was all non- 

 sense about the cotton ; and he brought a remedy, in the second place, 

 which was a very appropriate one under the circumstance namely, 



