1886. | The Relations of Mind and Matter. 13 
from time to time broken out, and raged in spite of every effort at 
suppression. But we have only space for some of the more par- 
ticular instances. It is significant that the most remarkable of 
these emotional epidemics have followed terrible pestilences, 
famines, or other great national calamities. Thus the terrible 
“ Black Death ” pestilence of the fourteenth century, which threw 
all Europe into a condition of severe mental depression, and 
roused a host of superstitious fears, was followed by extraordinary * 
outbreaks of fanaticism. These were the Flagellation mania and 
the Dancing epidemic. In the one, Europe was filled with throngs 
of self-flogging maniacs. In the other hosts of dancing and sing- 
ing convulsionists everywhere appeared, seemingly possessed by a 
fury,and convulsively leaping until they sank down in utter ex- 
haustion. The Tarantula epidemic of Italy was of the same gen- 
eral character. 
Two cases related by Zimmerman may be here senica 
given. In one case a nun, in a very large French convent, began 
to mew like a cat. Soon others of the nuns imitated her, and ere 
long the whole of the sisterhood were diligently mewing. So 
strongly did the mania possess them, that it was only broken up 
by the stationing ofa company of soldiers near the convent, with 
a threat to whip any one who should indulge in the peculiar vocal 
exercise, Dread of the whip proveda stronger mental force than 
the desire to mew, and the convent returned to its former peace 
and quiet. In the other instance a nun in a German convent, of 
the fifteenth century, began to bite her companions. Soon all the 
nuns fell to biting one another. As the news of this spread to 
other convents the biting mania broke out there also, until it 
spread throughout Germany and Holland, and extended so far as 
Rome. i 
The emotional character of the mental operations oi a religious 
sisterhood probably renders them specially susceptible to such 
psychic influences. In all such cases a considerable degree of 
mental excitement seems to have attended the mania. And it has 
been usually confined to the lower classes, though in a case of 
long continuance, like that of the Flagellants, nobles and ecclesi- 
astics, with many other persons of honorable birth, became affect- 
ed. In these days of science, education, and active thought gen- 
erally, such extended manias have ceased to exist, though minor 
examples may yet be found in ignorant communities. In 
