EPIDEMICS OF HYSTERIA. 549 



subject of deep investigations agree in this: that suggestibility 

 (using this word approximately in its psychological sense) is a 

 particular mark of the state of soul of the hysterical. 



No doubt hysterical epidemics based upon religion continue 

 even to this day. The last century was by no means poor in such 

 phenomena. 



The principal causes of the spread of epidemics of insanity 

 and of the so-called secular hysteria are, then, suggestibility, emo- 

 tionalism, the impulse to mimicry, and the tendency to mysticism. 



Secular hysteria has by this time gradually assumed a differ- 

 ent character. Belief in the devil and witches has faded quite 

 away. Nowadays phenomena that seem unaccountable are pro- 

 duced in great variety by the hysteria which still subsists, and 

 lead to crazy doctrines and errors, but they are new ones. Spirit- 

 ualism, which flourished most in the middle part of the century, 

 had such an origin. All those surprising phenomena that in 

 earlier times had been referred to the agency of the devil and of 

 witches were now treated as evidences of spiritual presence, te- 

 lepathy, etc. Hysteria and religious superstition had formerly 

 communicated each vitality to the other ; now hysteria and 

 pseudo-science intensified and propagated one another. The lit- 

 erature to which spiritualism has given rise is perfectly enormous, 

 and forms a pendant to the old books on witchcraft. Scientific 

 men of standing write in our times thick books to discuss the 

 evidences of the most incredible theories about spirits, about 

 veracious dreams, about prophecies, about telepathy, about clair- 

 voyance, about premonitions, etc. 



With our present knowledge of hysteria, its causes and symp- 

 toms, men of science and all who are enlightened by its teachings 

 are under a positive obligation, which can not be shaken off and 

 must not be shirked, to combat everything which tends to further 

 superstition or to nourish the inclination of the people toward 

 mysticism. Our duty it equally is to set our faces against those 

 pernicious practices which are calculated to favor and augment 

 that fatal symptom of hysteria, a heightened suggestibility. 



It is suggested in the Revue Scientifique that the distinctions made in 

 the laws for the protection of birds between insectivorous and graminiv- 

 orous bii'ds, and birds of passage and those of the country, are somewhat 

 illogical. All birds eat insects during a part of the year, and the little fruit 

 and grain some of them take is a cheap equivalent for the good they do in 

 the destruction of insects. It is often hard to decide whether a bird belongs 

 to the region or not. All bii'ds are more or less migratory, and their stay 

 in any place is largely governed by conditions of food and weather. Natu- 

 ralists are often surprised by finding species wintering in the north that 

 they had supposed were far in the south. 



