548 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



a time from their sufferings. The object of this was to dispel the 

 wind which set in after the attack. People often resorted to the 

 simpler method of planting blows of the fist or kicks upon their 

 abdomens. During their dance the subjects had visions. They 

 did not see or hear ; but in their imagination they beheld spirits 

 whose names they pronounced, or rather shrieked out, . . . fell 

 snorting to the ground without consciousness, and foamed at the 

 mouth. Then, all at once, they got up and began their dance 

 with frightful wrenchings. In a few months this plague ex- 

 tended from Aix-la-Chapelle as far as the Netherlands." Like 

 the men and women, children were likewise attacked. 



A phenomenon often seen to-day in insane asylums is that 

 patients think themselves to be beasts, such as dogs, cats, mon- 

 keys, wolves, etc., and behave accordingly. In the middle ages 

 this gave rise to the superstition of the Werewolf. The word 

 is formed from wolf and the obsolete word wer, in Gothic vair, 

 in Latin vir, man. Such persons, who during epidemics were 

 sometimes found in great numbers, ran about the woods on all 

 fours, lived and behaved exactly like beasts, fell upon men who 

 might pass by, attacked even riders and vehicles, and stole chil- 

 dren and devoured their flesh. Such things were known to the 

 ancients too. 



The influence which hysterical subjects exercised upon the 

 whole metaphysics, or view of the universe of those times, was 

 tremendous. While superstition and fanaticism may truly be 

 called the best fertilizers to yield a crop of hysteria and they 

 have vastly contributed to its extension and large growth at the 

 same time, hysteria, in its turn, with its astonishing symptoms, 

 far beyond the classificatory powers of those ages, has had the 

 effect of enormously feeding and propagating superstition. In 

 short, the two phenomena, hysteria and superstition, played into 

 one another's hands ; each was alternately cause and effect ; and 

 between them they called forth that dismal period in which the 

 human mind was loaded with fetters, and postponed for centuries 

 its free possession of its heritage. The author who is capable of 

 saying that before this our time " hysteria only occurred sporad- 

 ically, and was of no importance for the life of society in gen- 

 eral," is not acquainted with the history of insanity and the biog- 

 raphy of the human race. In order to pass judgment upon the 

 present times from a psychological point of view, the very first 

 requisite is an acquaintance with times gone by, and a tracing 

 out of the path which has brought our culture to its present 

 height. 



Before passing on to the study of the present, let us first ask 

 why and how it was that diseases of the mind took on an epidemic 

 character. Most of those authors who have made hysteria the 



