THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CRAZES. 289 



barking like dogs, fainting, crying, singing, praying and cursing. 

 Sometimes whole companies were seized with uncontrollable laughing 

 fits, called the holy laugh. At a meeting in East Tennessee, six hun- 

 dred began jerking at one time. In many instances sensibility 

 would be lost and the extremities would be cold, while the face was 

 flushed. In some places the sufferers were laid out in rows and squares 

 in the churchyard until they should recover. From a medical point of 

 view we should call this epidemic chorea, but its more exact physiology 

 I have already referred to. When closely examined, the phe- 

 nomena lose a part at least of their mysterious character. We must 

 remember that religious emotions are powerful, deep and ancient. The 

 effect, furthermore, is increased by the general epidemic excitement, 

 by the element of large and unwonted gatherings of people, by imita- 

 tion, by the stimulating music and by the fearfully exciting power of 

 human shrieks and wild cries and prayers. Such a nervous condition 

 induced in an individual must have two results: first, the escape of the 

 unusual nervous excitement in motor channels, giving rise to the 

 choreic movements; and second, the paralysis of the higher brain cen- 

 ters, resulting in various hypnotic phenomena and reversionary morality 

 and mentality. 



Many of these scenes were repeated in the great revival that swept 

 New York and the Middle States, beginning in the year 1832. In 

 these meetings preachers who kept cool and reasoned logically were not 

 listened to. There was rather a demand for the wild, impetuous, 

 vociferous, physically impassioned oratory of the rude man. As an 

 example of reversionary morals in this epidemic, we may notice the 

 fact mentioned by Albert Ehodes that in response to visions many men 

 put away their own wives and took others from their neighbors. 



From the psychological point of view perhaps the most instructive 

 of all epidemics is the demonophobia or witchcraft mania which raged 

 from the end of the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth centuries. 

 The savage's fear of demons and of unseen supernatural agencies lurking 

 in every forest and moor now took hold of the modern world and turned 

 the people, not into brutes and devils as we figuratively say, but simply 

 into the original savages from which they came, whose basal instincts 

 they still carried in their lower nervous centers, to be brought out under 

 the influence of a social craze. The ecclesiastical authorities, both 

 Roman and Protestant, led in this homicidal frenzy, while sedate 

 judges, learned jurors and wise legislators lent their zealous aid. It 

 spread in true epidemic form all over the Continent and into England 

 and Scotland, even to America. Distinguished jurists declared that 

 ordinary methods of trial should not be used for this offence, for so 

 difficult is it to bring proof of the crime of witchcraft, that out of 

 a million of witches not one could be convicted if the usual course of 



