EPIDEMICS OF HYSTERIA. 547 



pophagy that is, the delusion that the devil and his worshipers 

 lived on human flesh. Men were believed to live in the neighbor- 

 hood of Berne and of Lausanne who had given themselves to the 

 devil, and who ate their own children. Hundreds of men were 

 for this stretched on the rack or burned at the stake. Indeed, 

 there were a number of insane persons who thought that they 

 themselves were in league with the devil, and that they slew 

 children. 



The bull of Innocent VIII, which appeared in 1484, showed 

 how deep-rooted the devil-delusion was in Germany. Every- 

 where people talked of how there was a great league with devils 

 whose votaries committed deeds of shame in their assemblies ; of 

 how they were under obligation to destroy and consume newborn 

 babes before they were baptized. In one year after the publica- 

 tion of the bull, forty-one women were executed in Burbia be- 

 cause in their nocturnal assemblies they always strangled, boiled, 

 and ate a child. Toward the middle of the sixteenth century 

 there broke out in many places in Germany, especially in con- 

 vents, epidemic convulsions which exhibited the typical image of 

 la grande hysterie and were connected with symptoms of religious 

 delusions and of sexual excitement. Of one convent we read: 

 " It was singular that as soon as one nun had her fit, the others, 

 even in distant parts of the building, would immediately go off 

 into fits as soon as they heard the noise of a person falling. The 

 nuns had no power of will at all ; they bit themselves, struck and 

 bit their mates, knocked against one another, and endeavored 

 vehemently to wound strangers. Upon any attempt to control 

 the indecency of their conduct, their tumult and exaltation would 

 become more angry. If they were left to themselves, they would 

 soon come to biting and wounding without seeming to feel the 

 least pain." Such subjects were considered to be bewitched or 

 possessed of the devil. They were treated by exorcisms and con- 

 jurations which often increased their sufferings. 



Not women alone were attacked by the disease; men were 

 visited in the same way. Gilles de la Tourette gives an account 

 of such an epidemic, according to a description by Hecker. We 

 read: "In Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1574, troops of men and women 

 from Germany were seen laboring under a common madness and 

 displaying in the streets and churches this singular spectacle. 

 With clasped hands, and carried away by an inward compulsion 

 which they could not master, they danced for hours and kept up 

 the spectacle without being abashed by those who were about, 

 until they would fall exhausted to the ground. Then they would 

 complain of their great agony, and would groan as though they 

 were going to die, until people wrapped their abdomen with linen 

 cloths, whereupon they would come to themselves and be free for 



