Providentia

Zimbabwe Exorcism/Baptism Deaths Attributed to "Mermaids"

“I am shaken. I am beside myself. This has never happened in my life, and I do not know how to tell people about this, including my own relatives."

For self-styled prophet  Amos Chituri of Agness Access Apostolic Church (AAAC) based in Zimbabwe's Mutasa district, the combination baptism/exorcism he conducted last July likely seemed like a simple matter.   Instead, it resulted in three deaths and propelled Chituri and his fellow congregation members into a mystery that has generated international attention.  

Though the 49-year-old Chituri had been called to the nearby village of Tazvigwira to see a mentally ill child, he met with village elder Victor Tazvigwira as a courtesy.   Until Chituri "prophesized" that the elder was being haunted by the spirit of a man whose bones he had once found and needed to be cleansed as a result.   As a result, Chituri, Tazvigwira, the elder's wife, and two children, along with several youth members of Chituri's congregation, all went to the nearby Musogwezi River on July 21, 2021, for a combination baptism/exorcism ceremony.  

All nine people gathered at a shallow pool by the river and removed their shoes to prepare for the ceremony.  The pool itself was not considered dangerous and local children often swam there.  While Chituri stood at the pool's edge, other congregation members then began "speaking in tongues" and plunged into the pool.   They then reportedly heard "huge trembling noise from the pool and the hills above" and reportedly felt a force pushing them under the water.   According to Tazvigwira in an interview with media, "We could see each other as we struggled to escape from the bottom of the pool. Surprisingly we never bumped against one another, and we never gulped any water. I raised my hands to try and alert those outside of our predicament. After a while, I mysteriously found myself thrown out of the pool and lying on the ground. I still don’t know how I came out."  

It was only while recovering from the ordeal that the group noticed that three were still missing.  They were  Cosmas Mvicha, Witness Chirombo of Silas Village, and Fungai Berevedzai, a 14-year-old Form 2 girl at Mapakomhere High School.   After spending most of the day praying for their safe return, apparently in the belief that the others had been taken away by "mermaids"  (part of local folklore).  Realizing that their prayers were not effective, Chituri and the remaining group members finally contacted local authorities.  

A week-long vigil followed as people waited by the pool to see if the missing villagers would be returned.  Though police attempted to send in divers to investigate the pool and river, villagers blocked them, hoping that their traditional rituals might work in getting the three returned safely.   Spirit mediums also conducted ceremonies with no real results.  Finally, after seven days, the bodies of the three floated to the surface, one at a time over the course of several hours.   One of the emerging bodies was even photographed by local media.

While police are still investigating, villagers remain terrified about the mystery surrounding the three deaths.  Suffice it say, children are not swimming in that pool, anymore.

For more information.

 

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Blinding Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time.    Though better recognized during his lifetime as an organist than as a composer, his musical skills kept him in demand well into old age.   Unfortunately, while he was extremely healthy for most of his life, the great composer's health declined rapidly in 1749.  Years of writing musical manuscripts with insufficient light had damaged his eyes to the point that he became almost blind.    He may also have developed problems with cataracts and possibly diabetes mellitus as well.   

Bach's fame, and the financial support he received from his patrons, were enough for him to receive the finest help available at the time.   Unfortunately, that help took the form of a consultation with English oculist, John Taylor, self-styled "Opthalmaiter" to the Pope and "every crowned head in Europe."   Taylor had become famous for practicing a radical eye operation for removing cataracts.   This operation, called "couching" actually has a venerable history and may have been practiced as early as 2000 BCE.    Since cataracts are due to a clouding of the lens in the eye, the couching operation involved dislodging the clouded lens and breaking it up into pieces.    Considering John Taylor used unsterilized instruments, the immediate results were usually good but his patients were at grave risk of developing infection afterward.    Many went blind completely or died of infections though this hardly derailed the Opthalmaiter's glorious career.

 Born in Norwich in 1703, John Taylor was the son of a prominent surgeon (also named John Taylor).   After studying at St. Thomas' Hospital in London under the prominent eye surgeon, William Cheselden, Taylor decided to become an eye specialist in his own right.   Following a brief stint in a Norwich hospital, he established a traveling practice that took him across the United Kingdom and, eventually, across much of Europe.   An accomplished showman, Taylor traveled in style in an ornate coach which was painted all over with eyes.    Along with managing to become appointed official oculist to King George II, Taylor tended to many of Europe's royal families as well as some of the most prominent members of the arts, including composer Georg Handel and writer Edward Gibbon.   

It was quite a life for John Taylor,  who along with being "the greatest of travelers" as he described in his autobiography, was also an ardent womanizer who boasted of his conquests.   In promoting his traveling practice, the routine was always the same.  After arriving in a new town, he always gave a public lecture on eye disease and then offered his services to anyone with vision problems.   Like many oculists of the time, Taylor needed to keep moving since the improvements produced by his couching operation were usually only temporary.   While he prescribed eyedrops for his patients after the operation, that was all the postoperative care they ever received.  By leaving town before the inevitable medical complications arose, Taylor was able to avoid the nasty backlash that would follow.   In an era before social media, word of his failures was often slow to spread and Taylor never found himself short of patients.  

Along with carefully controlling the news of his arrival in various towns (through planted news stories and flyers), Taylor often arranged for untreated patients to arrive in town ahead of him to spread the word of his services.    Even when surgeons' guilds tried to act against him, they were usually overruled by town council members who felt that Taylor's royal patronage made him untouchable.    Taylor also flaunted his various medical degrees though he faced a running battle with medical organizations across Europe over whether he was actually qualified to perform operations in their countries.    It was a battle that Taylor usually won since he was rarely in any city long enough for serious opposition to develop.

But Taylor didn't just do cataract operations.   He had treatments for nearly any eye problem posed to him, though many of his remedies seem like quack remedies today.  The greatest demand was for couching however and Taylor continued to use the same standard operation for all his cataract patients.   While he had to be aware of the complications that often set in, the good doctor showed no interest in changing his preferred way of treating patients.   Though a better surgical procedure was already becoming available which involved complete extraction of the lens,  Taylor seemed unwilling to try it with his own patients.  

And he certainly had his critics.  Samuel Johnson dubbed him as " the most ignorant man I ever knew", while more prominent physicians and professors of anatomy at various European universities denounced his methods and his "successes."    When Taylor operated on Bach in Leipzig on April 1, 1749, he was in the middle of yet another triumphant European tour with various news stories (planted by Taylor) touting the benefits of his eye operations.    After Bach's first operation,  news stories (planted by Taylor)  reported that the composer had "recovered the full sharpness of his sight."    A second operation on Bach was done a short time later and Taylor then left Leipzig on April 8 to travel to Berlin.   Even then, however, news of what was happening with his patients was already beginning to spread.   Taylor left Berlin not long afterward when the Prussian king personally ordered him to leave Prussia.

As for Johann Sebastian Bach, he began experiencing medical complications shortly after Taylor left Leipzig which left him completely blind.   While Bach was still able to dictate his last few compositions to his son-in-law,  his career as an organist was over.   Though Bach claimed to recover his sight in July in 1750, there is no evidence that this was anything more than a hallucination.  Within hours, he had a seizure and slipped into a week-long coma.   Bach died on July 28, 1750, without ever regaining consciousness.  Afterward, at least one newspaper suggested that his death was due to "the unhappy consequences of the very unsuccessful eye operation."   Though modern medical historians believe that Bach died as a result of a stroke linked to pneumonia, the medical problems linked to his eye operation are believed to have played a significant role in his death.

While Georg Handel went blind himself not long after Bach's death, there is less evidence linking his blindness to Taylor's treatment (though he had operated on both composers).    For whatever reason, Taylor's career as an oculist went downhill sharply by the time he published his autobiography in 1761.    The title of this epic tome likely says it all about the good Chevalier:

History of the Travels and Adventures of the Chevalier John Taylor, Ophthalmiater; Pontifical-Imperial and Royal--The Kings of Poland, Denmark, Sweden, The Electors of the Holy Empire-- The Princes of Saxegotha, Mecklenberg, Anspach, Brunswick, Parme, Modena, Zerbst, Loraine, Saxony, Hesse Cassel, Holstein, Salsborg, Baviere, Liege, Bareith, Georgia, &c. Pr. in Opt. C. of Rom. M.D.-C.D.--Author of 45 Works in different languages: the produce of upwards of thirty Years, of the greatest Practice in the Cure of distempered Eyes, of any in the Age we live--Who has been in every Court, Kingdom, Province, State, City, and Town of the least Consideration in all Europe, without exception. Written by Himself. Introduced by an humble Appeal, of the Author to the Sovereigns of Europe. Addressed to his only Son.

But time and the increasingly successful attacks of medical associations eventually put an end to Taylor's mobile practice.  Doctors became better able to warn other towns about him and Taylor found himself being forbidden to see any patients by town burgomeisters (who no longer had any fear of his "royal patrons").    He was eventually chased out of the Netherlands after being fined for practicing medicine without a license and the Amsterdam surgeon's guild denounced him as "an adventurer who earned his living by wandering about through the country to make money."    Eventually, the doors closed on him in most other countries as well.

Ironically enough, Taylor would spend the last few years of his life completely blind though this hardly prevented him from living well.   Beyond blinding hundreds of eye patients during his amazingly long career,  John Taylor's notorious reputation also ensured his literary immortality as well.   Along with Samuel Johnson, other prominent satirists heaped abuse on him in their writing.    The epitaph which likely described him best was one by satirist Charles Churchill who referred to Taylor as "As well prepared, beyond all doubt, To put eyes in, as put them out."

So how was John Taylor able to continue performing his dangerous eye operations for so long?   Though often denounced as a quack, he was no swindler and he certainly didn't try selling the various patent medicines that many of the medical confidence artists of his time often did.   Sadly enough, his couching operation was considered the standard remedy of the time, and his failure to clean his instruments before surgery was also typical of most 18th century surgeons.   If anything, the public lectures he always gave on arriving in a new town helped cement his reputation as a legitimate medical expert.   While other doctors objected to how he treated patients, it was the protection Taylor obtained from many grateful patients, including King George II, that kept him in business.   That, and his canny ability to leave town before patients began complaining about complications.  

Much of Taylor's success as an eye surgeon seems to have depended on the same kinds of publicity tricks practiced by medical hucksters before and after him.  Though he may not have been consciously trying to deceive his patients,  his wandering eye practice was obviously intended to avoid the problems he would have had by staying in one place.   That his more pedestrian colleagues often faced enormous barriers in preventing him from doing any more operations certainly resonates today with medical doctors trying to put modern hucksters out of business (and often failing).   While a John Taylor might have trouble operating today, his spiritual descendants are still with us.

Becoming the King of the World

Whatever else you can say about the Reverend Homer Aubrey Tomlinson, he was definitely a showman.   As for his other achievements, real and self-proclaimed, you will have to decide that for yourself...

Born in 1892 in Westfield, Indiana, he was the oldest son. He presumed heir of Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson, the Church of God of Prophecy, one of the earliest Pentecostal denominations.     Despite an early career in an advertising agency, Homer joined his father's ministry in 1922, reportedly after a life-changing experience when he was "almost struck by lightning."    Along with establishing a congregation in Jamaica, New York, and evangelizing across the Northeast, Homer Tomlinson became well-known for grandiose stunts.   This included conducting the world's first parachute wedding at the New York World's Fair.   Along with Tomlinson, the bride and groom, best man, maid of honour, and four musicians all took part in the ceremony after jumping out of a plane together.  

Possibly due to his controversial antics, Homer Tomlinson was passed over as his father's successor following Ambrose's death in 1943.   The church elders claimed to have received a message in tongues to "bring forth the younger son," and Homer was left out in the cold when his legal battle to control the church failed.   Bouncing back from this disappointment,  Homer Tomlinson found his own denomination, the Church of God, based in New York City.  

With his usual flair for self-publicity (did I mention he was a former ad-man?),  Homer announced that his mission was to usher in the Kingdom of God by getting church members elected to public office.   With little hope of securing a Democratic or Republican nomination as a presidential candidate,  he decided to found his own political party instead.    The platform for the Theocratic party he founded in 1952 was straightforward enough:   unification of church and state, abolishing taxation in favour of tithing and creating two new cabinet posts, a secretary of righteousness and a secretary of the Holy Bible.   Despite running for president in 1952, 1960, 1964, and 1968, his support was never solid.  Best estimates suggest that he only got 20 votes in 1964 alone. 

Despite the failure of his presidential ambitions, Homer Tomlinson moved on to more grandiose goals.   After a 1954 convention of his Church of God reportedly acclaimed him as "almost a new Messiah," he declared himself King of the World.    Traveling to more than 100 countries, he staged numerous coronation ceremonies to proclaim his royal status.  With his gold-plated crown, his blue silk robes, an inflatable globe that he held in his hands,  a 15-inch flag featuring the "scepter of righteousness," and a cheap folding chair which served as his surrogate "Throne of David," Tomlinson's coronation ceremonies were certainly picturesque, if nothing else.  

Though most of these ceremonies took place at local airports, one of them being held in Moscow's Red Square to the bemusement of the Soviet government (Pravda referred to it as a publicity stunt by "an American actor").    He later claimed that his 1958 Red Square coronation "melted the Iron Curtain" and fostered peace (not that anyone else noted an easing of Cold War tensions afterward).   In the years following his first coronations as King of All The Nations of Men, he stated: "I crowned myself in every state, and at 67 colleges, and I visited 101 nations and crowned myself King in everyone, including Russia in Red Square, in Moscow on July 12, 1958.  Crowds greeted me everywhere."    Homer insisted that his traveling to different countries helped usher in the Kingdom of God by preventing revolutions, encouraging world peace, and ending droughts.

As part of his grandiose plan to reshape the world, Homer planned to move the seat of the United Nations to Jerusalem, where preachers would replace its ambassadors.   Not only would Jerusalem become the world's centre of finance and culture, any nation that waged war would be struck by drought and plague.   The Ten Commandments would be formally enacted into law everywhere, and taxation would be replaced by tithing.   All laws everywhere would be replaced by his own "48 laws," which, among other things, banned liquor and tobacco, provided equality for all, offered forgiveness for repentant criminals, and promoted love. 

The actual size of Homer Tomlinson's congregation, all of whom he dubbed "saints," was always hard to calculate, but he confidently placed it at 75,000 with 600 ministers under his control.    At other times, he assumed that all the world's Pentecostalists were under his dominion (though they likely didn't share this opinion).   As for his actual congregation, many followers were apparently dissatisfied with his leadership. One of them, Grady R. Kent, formed a separate denomination, Church of All Nations in 1957.  

When he wasn't traveling, Homer ran his worldwide empire from the two-story frame house in Queen's Village in New York City, where he had lived since 1920.   Homer Tomlinson's "mission" continued right up to his death in 1968.  According to an obituary in the New York Times,  he died quietly in a Manhattan hospital after a long illness.   Described as the "portly, pink-faced, cheery leader of the Church of God," he was survived by his wife Marie, whom he had met in an Aimee Temple McPherson tent in 1919.   Along with their two sons, he was also survived by their six grandchildren.   He is buried in Long Island cemetery. 

Though the Church of God still exists, the church website rather downplays the eccentric life of Bishop Tomlinson.   After his death, he was succeeded by Voy M. Bullen, who then moved the church to Huntsville, Alabama, to be closer to the centre of the movement.    While Tomlinson's church has undergone various moves and schisms since his death, the Church of God is reported to have over 70,000 followers at present, but this figure is considered to be likely inflated.  

So, was Homer Tomlinson prone to grandiose delusions, or was his "King of the World" campaign nothing more than an elaborate publicity stunt?   While his various "coronations" had no actual validity, they certainly kept him in the public eye.   Stirring up controversy ensured that Homer A. Tomlinson had greater name recognition than the other competing denominations, even if he picked up a reputation for being a crackpot along the way. 

And, perhaps that was enough for him.

 

The Movie Murderer

In 1995, a 14-year  boy, Sandy Charles, lured a 7-year old acquaintance into some bushes near their homes in the town of La Ronge in northern Saskatchewan under the pretext of playing a baseball game with him.    With the help of an unnamed 7-year old accomplice, Charles then stabbed and bludgeoned Jonathan Thimpsen.   After the murder,  Sandy  Charles mutilated the body by removing strips of skin which he took home to place in a tin can covered in foil.   An intense search of the area by friends and family led to Jonathan's body being found three days later.   After an investigation, Sandy Charles was arrested.

As Charles would later admit to investigators, he boiled the skin on the family stove to reduce the fat to liquid but had refrained from actually drinking it, stating that, "I just wanted to stay the way I am."   According to testimony later presented in court, Jonathan had been selected at random so that his fat could be harvested based on a scene from the 1989 movie Warlock.    The movie, featuring a 17th-century warlock who travels to the future, includes an off-camera murder of a young boy so that his fat could be extracted to make a potion enabling the warlock to fly.    According to Sandy Charles' mother, her son had become obsessed with the movie and saw it more than ten times.    While he admitted committing the crime to her, he also insisted that he could not stop himself.  "He said it was like a dream. He said he didn't want to do it, but it was like it wasn't him doing it", she reported.   He also later said that "There's a strong spirit in my room that gave me these thoughts.   I was going to commit suicide until this thing popped into my head. I started thinking about killing someone else. Something wanted me to." 

The killing of Jonathan Thimpsen and the subsequent publicity of Charles' trial generated international publicity given the age of the victim and the perpetrator and the bizarre circumstances involved.    The RCMP officers investigating the murder concealed many details for fear of possible "mass hysteria."     In a public statement before the trial began, RCMP Corporal Dave Hoefl refused to provide full details about the murder due to the possible impact on jury selection.  "When you take a look at a 14-year-old doing this to a seven-year-old, there has to be a reason.  There is a reason. We have to decide whether it's in the public interest to know that reason right now," he said.   "I'm not sure whether the community is ready for this or not - and in reality, I don't even think the province is ready for it."   Based on the circumstances of the crime,  Sandy Charles was tried for murder in an adult court.

During the trial, his defense attorney, Barry Singer, insisted that Charles was not guilty due to mental illness and that the movie had a powerful effect on his mind.  "In the movie, the idea was that if you cut the fat off a virgin, unbaptized child, then boiled it down and drank it. That would give you the power to fly," said Singer.  "Sandy was suffering from the delusion that if he did these things, it would give him the power to fly. The movie just gave him the know-how to do it."    Following the lurid testimony given during the trial, Sandy Charles was later found guilty because of insanity on August 2, 1996.  He was transferred to the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon and held until he eventually  =applied to be transferred to a secure psychiatric unit closer to his home.  

As many expected, the trial generated considerable debate concerning the link between movie violence and real-life crimes.    In their coverage of the murder, the Toronto Globe and Mail cited experts who warned against drawing general conclusions from the murder and warned that violent movies could be a "precipitating event" for an already troubled child.    Based on concerns relating to movie violence and a petition in the early 1990s calling for an end to violence on television, the Canadian government passed legislation forcing cable companies to enable parents to block violent programs deemed unsuitable for children.  Similar legislation was passed in the United States months later.

The debate concerning the potential impact of media violence on impressionable children is a longstanding one.   During the 1950s, Fredric Wertham's crusade against violence in comic books led to the implementation of the Comics Code Authority. In contrast, similar crusades against violence in video games, music lyrics, and the Internet have had limited success. Similar concerns over the potential impact of inappropriate content in movies and television programs have generated considerable controversy about whether children could model their behaviour on graphic violence seen on screen. 

Moral panics over violent movie and television content remain a familiar phenomenon, especially as new, shocking media depictions of graphic violence help inspire calls for greater censorship.   Certainly, the number of films that have faced censorship over the years in the United States alone, often for minor scenes that would likely have gone unnoticed by the audiences supposedly being protected, is mind-boggling.   In other countries, battles over movies such as A Clockwork Orange led to either outright censorship or awkward compromises with movies being dramatically re-edited or removed from distribution altogether.   Though changing social standards and legal challenges led to a reevaluation of many production codes that controlled movie content for decades, the battle over what can be shown on the screen is far from over.  

But does media violence really lead to youth violence?  Though Albert Bandura's classic Bobo Doll experiments suggest that children tend to imitate aggressive behaviours that they see being modeled,  the impact of observational learning as it applies to movie and television violence seems more muted.   Despite decades of media violence research, no clear causal link between media violence and real-life crimes has ever been found.   The rise in movie and television violence of the past two decades has not led to a similar increase in real-life violence.  If anything, there has been a sharp decrease in violence during that same period, especially among adolescents.   Though school shootings and other examples of extreme violence appear to inspire copycat offenses, most young people appear perfectly capable of distinguishing between fictional violence and the real thing.  

A more controversial theory about media violence deals with the idea of catharsis or using violent media content to purge viewers of their violent thoughts or fantasies.   The term "catharsis" was first coined by Aristotle, who suggested in his Poetics that watching violent Greek tragedies helped audiences "through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions."   In other words, watching violent movies or television shows made people less inclined to commit violent acts.    This was in direct opposition to Plato's view that plays, music, and literature had a potentially harmful effect on morals (thus making him the first moral crusader).     Along with being a common theme in literature, catharsis has also been adopted by psychoanalysts such as Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud.

While most moral panics surrounding media violence tend to peter out fairly quickly, new panics often arise to take their place.   Though cases such as Sandy Charles continue to be invoked as a justification for greater control over media content, actual evidence to support such control is often lacking.    More graphic cases of copycat violence can definitely be expected in future, but the knee-jerk reaction and the calls for control will likely follow the same old pattern.

Exploring the Beast Within

In the autumn of 1572, after a rash of animal attacks in the woods near Dole, France, the local peasants were authorized to seek out the werewolf assumed to be responsible. There were few actual sightings of the animal, but the "loup-garou" had carried off several small children and attacked horsemen who had driven it away "only with great difficulty and danger to their persons."   The peasants were instructed "to assemble with pikes, halberts, arquebuses, and sticks, to chase and to pursue the said were-wolf in every place where they may find or seize him; to tie and to kill, without incurring any pains or penalties." Despite their search, it was only on November 8 of that year that peasants came upon a "monstrous creature" attacking a young girl. The creature was driven off, although the girl later died of her injuries. Even in the darkness, some of the peasants thought they recognized the creature as a local hermit named Gilles Garnier.

Garnier was not popular in the region and was arrested after fifty witnesses filed depositions against him. Whatever protests of innocence he had were quickly ended by a session on the rack which "persuaded" him to confess to the charges. Garnier was sentenced to be burned alive at the stake and "that his ashes be then scattered to the winds." He was also ordered to bear all court costs, and the sentence was carried out on January 18, 1573.

A similar case came to trial in 1603 involving a mentally disturbed (and possibly intellectually challenged) boy named Jean Grenier. Following reports of animal attacks on children in Gascony, France, Grenier confessed to attacking and eating some of the children involved. He also stated that he was part of a werewolf "coven" and transformed himself using a "wolf's skin" given to him by a mysterious stranger. Survivors of the attacks confirmed Grenier's testimony, and he was found guilty. In a remarkable move for the time, the court concluded that Grenier was mentally ill (but possessed) and sentenced him to a Franciscan monastery for the rest of his life. When visited in the monastery years later, he was reported to be "diminutive in stature, very shy, and unwilling to look anyone in the face. His eyes were deep-set and restless; his teeth long and protruding; his nails black, and in places worn away; his mind was completely barren; he seemed unable to comprehend the smallest things". Grenier died at the age of 20.

An estimated 30,000 cases of lycanthropy were reported in Europe between 1520 and 1630 alone,  all of which were linked to the witchcraft mania occurring during the same period. Witches were frequently accused of changing themselves into cats or rabbits and attending demonic Sabbaths to meet Satan. Werewolves, in turn, were accused of transforming themselves with the Devil's aid. Convicted werewolves and witches were often condemned to be burned alive (except in England, where they were merely hanged).

The werewolf hysteria seemed to be largely fuelled by lurid stories of wolf attacks (which were more likely due to wild dogs) and only subsided when wolves were hunted to virtual extinction across Europe. The growing recognition that testimony obtained through torture was basically unreliable probably contributed to this decline (waterboarding advocates take note). The last major werewolf panic was in Gevaudan, France, following a series of killings by a "wolf-like creature" between 1763 and 1767. The killings were never solved.

While clinical lycanthropy (the delusion of changing into an animal) remains a recognized psychiatric condition, actual cases are rare (I've never encountered a case myself, alas, although I remain hopeful). Reports in the forensic literature of clinical lycanthropy patients committing violent acts are even rarer (but they have happened). Modern cases of lycanthropy tend to occur in people suffering from broader psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. Along with the classic werewolf delusion, there have also been reported cases of patients believing themselves changed into other types of animals, including dogs, frogs, and bees. While werefrogs do not evoke the same superstitious terror associated with werewolves, the unusual nature of this kind of psychopathology makes for fascinating reading.

Treatment seems to be straightforward as lycanthropic delusions respond well to medication (no burning necessary). Despite the popularity of werewolf movies in the past few years, there has been no evidence of any upsurge of cases, and the condition remains rare. Although werewolves live on as a cultural phenomenon, the hysteria that condemned Gilles Garnier to death has mercifully subsided (I hope).

Click here for a recent case history.

 

The Woyzeck Case

While cases of religious ecstasy are hardly unusual, there are definitely examples that tend to stand out.

In 1728, in the Parisian cemetery of St. Medard, a phenomenon began that quickly became the talk of France. Following the burial of a pious, Jansenist bishop named Francois de Paris in the cemetery, stories arose of miraculous cures being worked at the bishop's tomb. Pious female parishioners, who later became known as St. Medard's convulsionaries, were described as engaging in "contortions and convulsive movements, attended by cries, shrieks, and groans, all of which were regarded as manifestations of divine power." The adherents would work themselves into states of religious ecstasy and engage in acts of severe torture which they either inflicted on themselves or through the actions of assistants known as Secouristes. They would then reportedly work miracles and cure all forms of the disease.

The massive hysteria that arose led to a crackdown by the police under the King's orders and the eventual closure of the cemetery in 1732. Thousands of convulsionaries were arrested, and the movement went underground. It eventually split into different factions and faded into obscurity (despite briefly reappearing in Paris in 1759). The police action gave rise to a famous epigram: "De par le roi, defense a Dieu De faire miracle en ce lieu. (Louis to God: To keep the peace, here miracles must henceforth cease)." The convulsionaries of St. Medard gained literary immortality through the writings of Voltaire and Diderot.

A less famous but longer-lasting example of religious convulsionaries occurred in the northern Spanish town of Jaca. For centuries, this small town was known for the annual pilgrimage to commemorate its patron saint, Orosia (also spelled Eurosia). Different accounts of Orosia's life exist (and she may have never existed at all), and it remains unclear why she was named the patron saint of the demonically possessed. Still, she became the patron saint of Jaca after her relics were brought there in the eleventh century. From that time until the Church banned the practice in 1947, St. Orosia's convulsionaries took part in a bizarre procession each year on June 25 (the Saint's feast day).

The procession involved the "demonically afflicted" (e.g., epileptics, mentally ill, physically handicapped, and other stricken) and took place in front of the Saint's sarcophagus. The pilgrims would gather to find healing for their various afflictions through participation in the procession and exorcism rituals. In a description of the procession by a medical observer in 1881 (and bear with me here since my Spanish is rusty), the bishop and retinue of friars would start the procession accompanied by music and dancing. "Paralytics, madmen, people with epilepsy, and hysterics would gather during the night before the chest containing the saint's relics. Their infirmity is attributed to possession by a devil, and they seek the devil's elimination. Cramping, muscle contractions, spasmodic grins, and howling are the preamble of the convulsions. They would fall to the ground until they were black and blue, blood spurting from their mouths".

At this point, the exorcism would begin with multiple applications of the rosary and cross, which the convulsionaries would kiss repeatedly. Once the demon was deemed to have fled, the newly healed convulsionaries would jump for joy and scream. It is doubtful whether any actual "cures" occurred (there were certainly no follow-up studies). Still, the sight of the newly-exorcised praising the saint for their healing made for quite a spectacle by all accounts and drew pilgrims from all over the region.

The banning by the Church in 1947 brought an end to St. Orosia's convulsionaries and marked the last example of recurring mass motor hysteria in Europe. Sadly, the use of exorcism in dealing with mental illness continues even today with tragic results. When proper mental health care isn't available, and families seek a cure for their loved ones, what solutions might they turn into desperation?

The Shrinking Penis Panic

In September 2003, news sources documented numerous accounts of mysterious foreigners (origin and description varying with each retelling) in Khartoum, Sudan who were causing penises to disappear by shaking the hands of their victims in public. Details were rarely consistent, but media accounts told of victims who reported that their penises began to "melt into their body" either after shaking hands or using a "penis-melting cyborg comb" that had been given to them by a mysterious stranger.

One Sudan-based columnist went as far as reporting in a foreign-based newspaper that "Even though what I write today will harm 'tourism' in Sudan, I consider it my duty to warn anyone who wants to come to Sudan to refrain from shaking hands with a dark-skinned man. Since most Sudanese are dark-skinned, he had better avoid shaking hands with anyone he doesn't know…". The mysterious hand-shaker (often referred to as `Satan`s Friend`) was said to `drain men`s virility through a handshake and then extort money from victims to regain their lost manhood. The accusations and recriminations were directed against numerous convenient scapegoats, including `Zionist agents` attempting to exterminate the Sudanese by preventing men from procreating. Though medical examinations showed no sexual abnormalities in victims, it took an active intervention on the part of the Sudanese government (including numerous arrests of alleged victims and others accused of practicing `sorcery`) to bring an end to the hysteria.  While it was ultimately deemed a hoax that got out of hand, the furor took a while to subside. 

Despite being the most widely reported outbreak, what happened in Khartoum was only part of an epidemic of genital shrinking hysteria reported in six West African nations between January 1997 and October 2003. There appear to be superficial resemblances to the cultural psychosis known as Koro, but with a significant twist given the nature of the accusations leveled against mysterious `others` who supposedly emasculated African men.   Cases of perceived genital shrinkage have been primarily reported in Southeast Asian males. However, similar cases have been reported in non-Oriental cultures and seem to be associated with a fear of losing sexual potency.

What then are we to make of what happened in Khartoum in 2003?  It seems likely that the epidemic was fuelled by media coverage. Still, the political turmoil resulting from a long and bloody civil war (which has since escalated) probably played a part. There seems to be little available information on psychological or demographic factors that may have made the victims more vulnerable to suggestions.

While `mass hysteria` is a convenient label for outbreaks of unusual symptoms, it seems to mask the very legitimate fears that people in a given time or culture may experience and may emerge in an exaggerated form with the right provocation. For the Sudanese males affected, the fear of ethnic cleansing (including the genuine ethnic cleansing occurring in Darfur) may well have driven the epidemic with various scapegoats (domestic or foreign) being proposed as targets of potential retribution.

While the idea of penis-shrinking hysteria may make for entertaining reading, the paranoia triggered during mass hysteria outbreaks shouldn`t be dismissed so easily.  The violence that can erupt due to mass hysteria has led to some tragic episodes over the years.  Witch-hunts (sometimes literally so) have claimed countless lives through the centuries, and even "civilized" people can form lynch mobs under the right circumstances. 

In other words, don't believe everything you hear (especially if it involves penis-melting combs).   

Skeptics Warning about New "High Meat" Health Trend

"In the beginning, I was a bit sceptical. But my friend has been doing it for over a year. I thought that since he didn't get sick, there was enough empirical evidence to say that I wouldn't get sick.  Then I tried it, and it actually felt pretty good. The first night I tried it, I had some interesting dreams, more vivid and rather odd," 

In an interview with LadBible, Swedish health enthusiast Daniel Larsen hardly seems like the sort of person to risk his health by eating rotten meat.   Still, the 27-year-old Larsen is only the latest to advocate a bizarre new health trend that has gone viral on social media in the past few weeks.    This new trend involves purchasing meat and setting it, either in a refrigerator or in a plastic container, until it begins to rot and ferment.  The meat is then eaten raw, something that consumers claim produces a feeling of euphoria, thus earning it the nickname of "high meat."   Insisting that he isn't bothered by the smell of rotting meat, Larsen adds that it gives him the same effect as drinking two or three beers.  He also claimed to have talked to his family doctor before starting high meat, though what the doctor had to say was not reported.

Since the high meat craze first broke, social media posts about it have become increasingly common.   One Twitter post by an anonymous fitness enthusiast only known as @BlazenBrady presented a picture of what was claimed to be a workout meal.   The picture showed a plate of raw chicken,  bacon, butter, and raw milk.   He ended the post by adding that “Chicken is not bad at all and tastes fine. This meal is my standard meal I usually eat all the time; I eat mainly more steak over chicken, though usually.”    He responded to skeptics by posting a video of him eating the raw meat while speaking to the camera.

So how dangerous is "high meat?"    That largely depends on how contaminated the meat becomes before being eaten.   While uncooked meat isn't necessarily harmful (think sushi or steak tartare), it is still considered unwise due to the potential presence of harmful bacteria such as salmonella.  When the meat is allowed to rot, consumers risk serious stomach upset and, in some cases, acute food poisoning, which is potentially fatal.    While predatory animals can eat uncooked meat without risk, humans lack the stomach acids that destroy harmful bacteria.   While there have been no cases of fatal food poisoning with high meat consumers yet,  some consumers are already reporting episodes of explosive diarrhea and nausea.   

Though the high meat craze will surely fade as all other crazes do, it's hard to imagine that the potential high people are hoping for can be worth the risk.  For now, at least, enjoy your cooked meat and get your high from sensible eating.

 

 

The Freud-Frink Fiasco

Despite becoming a household name later in his life, Dr. Sigmund Freud was not well-known outside of his native Austria during the first two decades of the Twentieth Century.  Along with his relative anonymity, he also had money woes courtesy of the soaring hyperinflation occurring in Austria and Germany following the First World War.   Not only was he having trouble supporting himself and his family, but promoting the psychoanalytic movement he founded was increasingly difficult as well.    Even his medical practice suffered as many patients found themselves unable to afford years of psychoanalysis.

Efforts to expand psychoanalysis to North America through a 1909 American tour helped raise Freud's profile slightly despite his misgivings about American innovators twisting the purity of his theories.  He dreaded the idea of psychoanalysis becoming “Americanized,” especially considering how puritanical Americans were about sex.    Freud even turned down generous offers for further American lecture tours due to his concerns about the “notoriety” involved.  While he managed to publish English-language versions of many of his works (featuring introductions from prominent psychologists such as G. Stanley Hall),  he fought continually with his publicist Edward L. Bernays (who also happened to be his nephew).   Although the royalties from the translated books brought in some revenue, it would be many years before becoming financially independent. 

All of which may have played a role in the peculiar case of Horace  Westlake Frink…

One of Sigmund Freud’s first American disciples, Horace Frink, was a founding member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and one of the first American books on psychoanalysis, Morbid Fears and Compulsions.  He even traveled to Vienna in 1921 to undergo psychoanalysis from “the master” himself as part of his training as a psychoanalyst.   But Frink had problems in his own right since he suffered from episodes of depression and hypomanic behavior (which would likely get him a diagnosis of bipolar disorder today).   Despite these symptoms, he became Freud's chief American disciple when he began psychoanalysis with Freud.

It was during the course of this psychoanalysis that a brewing scandal was uncovered.  Though Frink was married with two children of his own, he was also having a sexual affair with one of his former patients, Angelika Bijur.  She was a New York heiress married to a much older man, Abraham Bijur. The prospect of breaking up both marriages over this relationship was naturally frightening for the two of them.  This was especially true for Frink since it would have meant losing contact with his children.   And so, Horace Frink and Angelika Bijur both became patients of Freud as a way of avoiding divorce. 

Which, as it happened, was precisely what Sigmund Freud advised for them.   Completely ignoring Frink's depressive episodes and the possibility that he was borderline psychotic,  Freud focused on his sexual frustration issues instead.   Drawing on Frink's history of serious emotional losses (including losing his mother to tuberculosis at an early age), Freud concluded that Frink was an unconscious homosexual.    This was a pet theme for Freud, and he tended to focus on unconscious homosexuality and the Oedipus complex with many of his male patients.    Not only did he recommend that Frink divorce his wife, but he also told Bijur to divorce her husband as well.  He even went so far as to tell her that Frink would likely develop homosexual problems if she didn’t do as he advised.    The fact that Angelika Bijur was also independently wealthy (she had paid for her own therapy and Frink's) may have influenced Freud as well.

Ironically, the problem, and the potential media disaster, of Freud’s role in the breakup of two marriages neatly solved itself.   Frink’s wife died of pneumonia in 1923 (whether or not the trauma of her divorce from Frink contributed to her death is open to question).   As for Abraham Bijur, who was furious at Freud for interfering in his marriage, he died of cancer in May 1922.  The timing of Bijur’s death was extremely fortunate as far as Freud was concerned.   Not only did it make the divorce from Angelika unnecessary, but it also ended Bijur’s planned media campaign against Freud.  Before his death, Bijur had written a  letter denouncing Freud, which he intended to run as an advertisement in several New York newspapers.  Though the letter was never published, Bijur’s denunciation of Freud and his anguished question of whether he was a “savant or charlatan” would likely have destroyed the good doctor's reputation in the United States if he had lived just a little longer.

As for Horace Frink, his mental condition worsened, likely aided by guilt over his first wife’s death.   Despite his marriage to Angelika on December 27, 1922, Frink's mental state deteriorated and ultimately led to being institutionalized.  He and Anjelika were divorced in 1925. 

Sigmund Freud continued pressuring both Horace and Angelika throughout the entire fiasco for money to support the psychoanalytic movement.  In one letter he wrote to Frink in 1921, he suggested that his patient’s failure to acknowledge his own homosexuality was linked to his need to contribute to Freud’s psychoanalytic fund.   When Angelika later told him that her marriage to Frink was falling apart,  Freud sent a telegram which said, “Extremely sorry.  The point where you failed was money.”   As a result, Anjelika abandoned the psychoanalytic movement and felt personally betrayed by Freud.

 With further therapy under his old mentor Adolf Meyer, Frink managed to recover to the point of regaining custody of his children and becoming a stable father to them for years.   Despite hopes for a professional comeback, Frink was expelled from the American Psychoanalytic Society, largely because Freud had lost confidence in his ability to continue as a psychoanalyst.    As a result, Frink and his children were forced to rely on the money they had inherited from his first wife and the divorce settlement he had received from Anjelika.    While he later remarried,  Frink eventually suffered a relapse along with serious heart disease.   He experienced a final psychotic break and died of heart disease at the age of fifty-three.

Though Horace Frink had become disillusioned about psychoanalysis, he continued to hold Freud in high regard.   When asked about him shortly before his death, Frink commented that Freud was a great man, "even if he did invent psychoanalysis."   As for Sigmund Freud, he apparently viewed Frink's mental breakdown as a justification for his anti-American attitudes.   Since Frink had been his choice to lead the psychoanalytic movement in the United States,  this mental instability helped reinforce Freud's mistrust of Americans as a whole.  As he would comment in 1924, "My attempt at giving them a chief in the person of Frink which has so sadly miscarried is the last thing I will ever do for them, had I to live the one hundred years you set down for the incorporation of psychoanalysis into Psychiatry."   The role he played in destroying Frink's first marriage and his later tragedy was conveniently overlooked.   Luckily for Freud, the most embarrassing details of the whole affair would not come out for decades after his death.

Did the prospect of gaining a wealthy patron override Freud’s judgment concerning what was best for his patients?   Although Abraham Bijur's convenient death saved Freud from the public scandal over his role in breaking up two marriages, Sigmund Freud seemed not to have learned any real lesson about needing to separate clinical judgment from his own financial needs.   His desperate search for money during the 1920s seemed to have taken him in some strange directions. Still, the bizarre episode with Horace Frink and Anjelika Bijur represents one of the most serious ethical breaches of his career.    Though Sigmund Freud was still years away from attaining the iconic reputation he would enjoy by the middle of the 20th century, much of that fame depended on keeping his biggest disasters out of the public eye.

Doctors in India Warning Against Use of Cow Dung As Protection from Coronavirus

With over twenty-four million COVID-19 cases already reported in India, a quarter-million fatalities thus far,  and thousands of new fatalities being reported daily,  panic is running rampant across the country.   But India's medical doctors are warning that shortages in critical medical supplies have driven many Hindus to seek alternative 'cures' of doubtful validity.  One of the most bizarre of these reputed cures involves people bathing themselves in cow dung, believing that it will save them from becoming infected.

Since cows are regarded as holy animals by Hindus, cow dung and urine have been used in Hindu healing rituals for centuries because of their supposed antiseptic and therapeutic properties.   Since the pandemic began, however, cow shelters throughout India have been besieged by people wishing to douse themselves in excrement and having it washed off with milk, hoping that it will boost their immune systems and protect them from COVID.    Many Hindu monasteries and schools actively promote cow-dung treatment, and news stories of people insisting that their treatment cured them of the virus remain popular.

But a news release by Dr. JA Jayalal, president of the Indian Medical Association, warns that the cow dung 'cure' is actually useless and may well worsen the pandemic since many people who are already infected often gather in groups with no attempt at social distancing or mask-wearing.  "There is no concrete scientific evidence that cow dung or urine work to boost immunity against COVID-19," he said. "It is based entirely on belief.  There are also health risks involved in smearing or consuming these products - other diseases can spread from the animal to humans."   He lamented that many medical doctors also seek the treatment hoping that it would allow them to tend to patients without safety precautions.

Cow dung therapy is hardly the only alternative remedy people seek out to protect themselves from the pandemic.  Medics in rural parts of Maharashtra state are also warning that patients are being brought to them with marks from hot irons held against their skin by witch doctors in an attempt to "drive the virus out."

With the pandemic showing no signs of easing and international health agencies warning that new COVID-19 variants are already being reported across India, the death toll, which already accounts for a third of all fatalities, will certainly drive the search for a miracle cure.   So cow dung therapy will remain popular, at least for now.  

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