EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 19 



an electrical machine ; and lie gave them some good violent shocks, 

 which would do them no harm, assuring them that this would cure 

 them. And cure them it did. There was not another attack after- 

 ward. I remember very well that when I was a student at Bristol, 

 there was a ward in the hospital to which it was usual to send young 

 servant-girls; for it was thought undesirable that these girls should be 

 placed in the ward with women of a much lower class, especially the 

 lower class of Irishwomen who inhabited one quarter of Bristol, as I 

 believe there is an Irish quarter in Manchester. These girls were 

 mostly respectable, well-conducted girls, and it was thought better 

 that they should be kept together. Now, the result of this was that, if 

 an hysteric fit took any one of them, the others would follow suit ; and 

 I remember perfectly well, when I happened to be a resident pupil, 

 having to go and scold these girls well, threatening them with some 

 very severe infliction. I forget what was threatened, perhaps it would 

 be a shower-bath, for any one who went off into one of these fits. 

 Now, here the cure is effected by a stronger emotion, the emotion of 

 the dread of we will not call it punishment but of a curative meas- 

 ure ; and this emotion overcame the tendency to what we commonly 

 call imitation. It is the suggestion produced by the sight of one, that 

 brings on the fit in another, where there is the predisposition to it. 

 Now, I believe that in all these cases there is something wrong in the 

 general health or in the nervous system ; or the suggestion would not 

 produce such results. Take the common teething-fits of children. 

 We there see an exciting cause in the cutting of the teeth ; the press- 

 ure of the tooth against the gum being the immediate cause of the 

 production of convulsive action. But it will not do so in the healthy 

 child. I feel sure that in every case where there is a teething-fit, of 

 whatever kind, there is always some unhealthy condition of the ner- 

 vous system sometimes from bad food ; more commonly from bad 

 air. I have known many instances in which children had fits with 

 every tooth that they cut, yet when sent into the country they had no 

 recurrence of the fit. There must have been some predisposition, some 

 unhealthy condition of the nervous system, to favor the exciting cause, 

 which, acting upon this predisposition, brings out such very unpleas- 

 ant results. 



There are plenty of stories of this kind that I might relate to you. 

 For instance, in nunneries it is not at all uncommon, from the secluded 

 life, and the attention being fixed upon one subject, one particular set 

 of ideas and feelings the want of a healthy vent, so to speak, for the 

 mental activity that some particular odd propensity has developed 

 itself. For instance, in one nunnery abroad, many years ago, one of 

 the youngest nuns began to mew like a cat ; and all the others, after a 

 time, did the same. In another nunnery one began to bite, and the 

 others were all affected with the propensity to bite. In one of these 

 instances the mania was spreading like wild-fire through Germany, ex- 



