Throughout the Middle Ages and well into the 20th century, epidemics of mass hysteria have occurred around the world. From dancing manias to penis panics, these epidemics have a strange tendency to begin unexpectedly and run their course with nobody quite knowing what really happened. Despite extensive psychological and sociological research about the various outbreaks, there has never been a clear scientific consensus over what can trigger an episode of mass hysteria and how to deal with the aftermath. The social and cultural beliefs that can reinforce mass hysteria tend to come out in surprising ways (and in unexpected places).
One case of mass hysteria began when a girl working at a cotton factory in Hodder Bridge, Lancashire decided to play a prank on a fellow worker. On February 15, 1787, she caught a mouse and then slipped it into the the other worker's clothing. The victim of the prank, who apparently had a fear of mice, promptly went into convulsions that lasted nearly 24 hours. Even after she recovered, three other girls working at the factory began to display identical symptoms including "anxiety,strangulation, and very strong convulsions and these were so violent as to last, without any intermission, from a quarter of an hour to twenty-four hours, and to require four or five persons to prevent the patients from tearing their hair and dashing their heads against the floor or wall".
As more people became ill, the rumours began to spread. The original prank with the mouse was quickly forgotten while factory workers and their families began to speculate about other possible causes. After six more girls and a man began showing signs of confusion, work at the factory came to a halt. More workers became ill and the "disease" began to spread to nearby locations despite no apparent contact with the factory or its workers. Public panic grew over the idea that the epidemic was caused by something in one of the newly opened cotton bales at the factory. Given that epidemics of plague, yellow fever, and cholera were still common in that era, the notion of a disease brought in from some exotic land seemed all too plausible. At the peak of the epidemic, twenty-four people were affected (including 21 young women, 2 girls aged ten, and one man).
Enter William St. Clare. A well-respected local physician with an interest in mental disorders, he was called to the factory on February 18th to investigate the outbreak. Along with the rest of the tools of his profession, Dr. St. Clare also brought a hand-cranked electrical generator. While electricity had been little more than a curiosity prior to the 18th century, enthusiastic researchers including Benjamin Franklin, Otto von Guericke, and Stephen Grey had published radical new findings that opened up exciting new possibilities for its use in medicine and biology. Although electric shock as a medical treatment for nervous conditions wouldn't really become popular until the 19th and 20th century, St. Clare had no hesitation about being a pioneer.
Setting up his generator at the factory, he carefully shocked each patient who had been reporting seizures. According to accounts, "the patients were universally relieved without exception". Once Dr. St. Clare was able to convince all the affected workers that the epidemic was "nervous" in nature and not caused by the cotton, the epidemic stopped immediately. To help the process along, St. Clare recommended that all affected workers "take a cheerful glass and join in a dance". Within days, the factory was back to normal.
So why did a simple prank trigger an epidemic? And how did Dr. St. Clare's unconventional treatment end it? As the first recorded incident of mass psychogenic illness in an industrial setting, the Hodder Bridge epidemic provides an interesting example of how psychologial and social factors can interact unexpectedly. The rise of modern factories, helped along by Cartwright's invention of the power loom in 1786, led to a radical change in how people were expected to work. The largely uneducated workers found themselves in cramped factories doing monotonous work for long hours. With few opportunities for rest (and definitely no coffee breaks in that pre-union era), workers were especially open to rumours about unsafe work conditions. Job dissatisfaction, changes in working conditions, or even rumours of similar outbreaks elsewhere were enough to trigger episodes of mass psychogenic illness in many cases,
Women (especially adolescent females) seem unusually overrepresented in incidents of this type although demographic factors alone don't seem sufficient to explain why or when these outbreaks occur. Although Dr. St. Clare didn't have the sane experience that later medical investigators looking into outbreaks like this would have, he recognized the need to rule out other possible causes of the symptoms. These include possible infectious agents or contamination from the cotton. Since some of the affected people had no actual contact with the factory or its workers, it seemed safe to assume that the outbreak was psychological in nature.
As for treatment, that's where Dr. St. Clare had to improvise. Actually accusing the patients of inventing their symptoms would have likely worsened the crisis. Closing the factory helped to remove the immediate threat of contamination while he administered his "treatment", The effectiveness of his unusual therapy helped show his patients that they were being taken seriously while also appearing to deal with their complaints. Once he was able to demonstrate that there was no danger, the factory could be reopened with work resuming.
Although later cases of mass psychogenic illness have not been as easily resolved, the assessment and treatment issues remain much the same as what William St. Clare faced. While the actual cause of hysterical outbreaks is not always clear, episodes in factories, school settings, and other places where people or children remain together in close association continue to occur around the world. So long as rumours continue to spread, it's doubtful whether these outbreaks will ever completely go away.
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