Strange and horrifying cases of mass hysteria in history

By the Middle Ages, this was replaced by a belief in witchcraft, demonic possession or insanity as a cause. Although the emergence of mass hysteria continues to bewilder the medical community, it is now commonly associated with cases of extreme mental or emotional stress.

Here are some famous - and strange - cases of mass hysteria in history.

Medieval Mania (13th - 17th centuries)

Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564–1638) describes a dance hysteria that occurred during a pilgrimage to the church in Molenbeek, Belgium.

Dance mania, also known as the Dance Plague, Saint John's Dance, or Saint Vitus' Dance, spread across continental Europe from the 13th to the 17th centuries.

One of the best known major outbreaks took place in Aachen, Germany, on June 24, 1374. During this time, sick people would dance hysterically in the streets for hours, days, and even months, until they collapsed from exhaustion or died of a heart attack or stroke. The number of people involved in any outbreak can run into the thousands.

Dancing epidemics are known to have occurred several times throughout medieval Europe, with outbreaks occurring in Italy, Luxembourg, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Dancing mania was originally thought to be a curse sent by a saint, often thought to be Saint John the Baptist or Saint Vitus.

As a result, people suffering from this condition will go to places dedicated to the aforementioned saint to pray for deliverance from their tribulation, a 'remedy' that seems to have brought many back to full health.

The Biting Nins (15th Century)

In the 15th century, another mass hysteria occurred in Germany when a nun in a convent began to bite other sisters. Before long, this practice spread throughout the monastery, and as news spread, the phenomenon also occurred, leading to outbreaks of human biting throughout Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy.

As described by a 15th-century doctor: 'A nun in a monastery in Germany bit all her companions. In a short time, all the nuns of this convent began to bite each other. The news of this infatuation among the nuns quickly spread and it has now been passed through the convent to travel throughout much of Germany, mainly Saxony, and it has subsequently visited nuns. nuns in the Netherlands and eventually the nuns were bitten by mania even as far as Rome."

The church believed that the nuns were possessed by ghosts and attempted to perform exorcisms but this did not stop the behavior. In the end, they resorted to threats of swapping or being drowned for any nuns caught biting others. After a few examples of nuns being punished, the behavior quickly subsided.

The Salem Witch Trials (1692–1693)

Represented the Salem witch trials. A lithograph from 1892 by Joseph E. Baker.

One of the famous cases of mass hysteria occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. Dozens of young girls exhibited uncontrollable screaming and convulsions, which eventually caused a series of accusations of witchcraft. The result was a series of hearings and prosecutions of those accused of witchcraft, known as the Salem Witch Trials, which resulted in the deaths of 25 citizens of Salem and surrounding towns.

The Salem witch trials, which became an influential event in American history, have been used in popular literary and political rhetoric to highlight the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, and a breakdown in processing.

French nuns (19th century)

Institutional settings such as schools, prisons, and tight-knit communities are often outbreaks of mass hysteria, and European Christians are no different. In JFC Hecker's 1844 book "Middle Ages Epidemiology," there is a story about a nun in a convent in France who began to meow like a cat. Soon, the other nuns started exhibiting the same behavior, until the entire convent was thwarted by the nuns nyah. This caused concern in the surrounding Christian neighborhood, and soldiers were eventually called in to try to bring the situation under control. The nuns were whipped and beaten by soldiers until they promised to stop making deafening noises. In this era, belief in possession was common, and in France,

Translation of Tanganyika laughter (1962)

The Tanganyika laughter epidemic began on January 30, 1962, at an all-girls boarding school in Kashasha, Tanzania. Laughter began among the three girls but quickly spread throughout the school, lasting for hours, days, and weeks, leading to its closing on March 18, 1962. But it didn't end there. After the school was closed, the mass hysteria spread to other schools and eventually to other neighboring villages. Thousands of children were affected by the epidemic, and 14 schools were forced to close. The final hysteria died out about eighteen months after it began.

The cases involving the spread of mass hysteria appear to be at odds with the increasingly educated public, who no longer believe in the cause of wandering wombs, demonic possessions, or sorcery. aqua as an explanation. But the waves of mass hysteria continued; A recent case took place in 2012 when 1,900 children at 15 schools in Sri Lanka were treated for a range of symptoms including skin rashes, dizziness and cough with no known physical cause.

While cases of hysteria are easily seen as ludicrous and bizarre behavior, research has shown that there are a number of complicating factors that can contribute to the formation and spread of mass hysteria, including anxiety. Social anxiety, cultural pressures, rumors, fears, unusual excitement, religious beliefs, reinforcing the actions of authority figures, and extreme stress.

The social, political and religious landscape has changed over the centuries, but the human psyche has largely remained the same, and it is for this reason that we are likely to see many more occasions of mass hysteria in the coming years. future.