828 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



I 



COMMUNICATED INSANITY. 



By CHAELES W. PILGRIM, M. D. 



FOR several weeks past it has been scarcely possible to take up 

 a paper without seeing such startling headlines as " Trip- 

 lets, and all Crazy," " Three Daughters become Maniacs," etc. In 

 fact, so much publicity has been given to the rather unusual num- 

 ber of cases of communicated insanity that have recently occurred 

 in New York, Buffalo, and Philadelphia that the subject has be- 

 come one of general interest and one upon which accurate infor- 

 mation should be given. 



The fact that an insane person can, under certain conditions, 

 produce the same form of insanity in another previously sane, or 

 infect him as it were, is indisputable. The French were the first 

 to recognize this fact, and several cases have been reported in 

 L' Encdphale, and other journals, under the term /oZie a deux. It 

 has also been called folie simuUanee by Regis, and foUe imposee 

 by Falret. 



Although /oZie a deux is not an unusual occurrence, /oh'e a trois 

 is quite uncommon, and still rarer, although not unknown, is the 

 evolution of insanity with like symptoms in whole families. Dr. 

 Cramer, in the Allgemeine Zeitschrift flir Psychiatric, reports a 

 most interesting example of the latter kind where a mother and 

 daughter becoming insane, and possessed with delusions of perse- 

 cution, impressed the same delusions upon the father and five 

 grown-up children. Thus the same form of insanity was imposed 

 upon a family of eight. 



Dr. Ireland, in his interesting book The Blot upon the Brain, 

 shows how powerful an influence the insane mind has had upon 

 the sane in the history of religious imposture. He calls attention 

 to the fact that there are people still living who remember Joanna 

 Southcott, who claimed that when sixty years of age she would 

 give birth to the Messiah, and who succeeded in making nearly a 

 hundred thousand people in England believe in her statements. 



Brothers, of whose insanity there is no doubt, infected many, 

 and even some among the educated, with his claims to inspira- 

 tion ; and John Thorns, of Canterbury, as late as 1838 collected 

 quite a number of followers whose faith was great enough to 

 make them believe that they would be invulnerable against the 

 attacks of the militia. As a result, Thoms and nine of his credu- 

 lous followers fell victims to the bullets of the soldiers. But even 

 then all faith was not lost, for many believed that he would rise 

 again within a month. Such psychical epidemics, Kirchhoff be- 

 lieves, are gradually evolved by a sort of " waking suggestion " 

 like the process of suggestion during hypnosis. 



