ICphlemic 
A LECTURE. 
/ 
v 
FREDERIC R. EARVIN, M. D. 
Proftssor of Psychological Medicine, and Medical Jurisprudence 
in the New York Free Medical College for Women. 
READ BEFORE THE 
NEW YORK LIBERAL CLUB, 
May !)th, 1873. 
New York : 
ASA K. BUTTS & CO., 
36 I)ey Street. 
1874. EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
It seems to be the peculiar mission of modem 
science to demonstrate the permanency and uni- 
versality of law ; to drive from the universe the 
very thought of caprice, and to introduce inviola- 
ble harmony where was the * wildest discord, 
rudest fancy, and merest fiction. To modern 
science nothing is more impossible than miracle, 
nothing more absurd than accident. The rational 
philosopher recognizes no causes but such as are 
reducible to law, and all causes are natural and 
immutable. He discovers the play of law, not 
only in the motion of a planet and the falling of 
an apple, but in the prevalence of a crime and 
the rise of a religion. All things have causes— 
all are in their turn causes, and governed by 
perfect and consistent law. The thoughts we 
think, the emotions we feel, and the acts we 
perform, are links in a chain no effort can break, 
and that will endure when we shall have crumbled 
into dnst; and in our graves we shall still be 
governed by a law we obeyed before the cradle of 
infancy received us. There is no escape, no truce, 
no delay: science has torn the mask of fable from 4 
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
the face of nature, and revealed the marvelous 
features that no skill may interpret. 
In vain the student of nature explained the fam- 
ine, the astronomer the eclipse, and the general 
the defeat. Men would have miracles, and when 
they could not lind them they invented them. 
But science, who touched the fables of the past,, 
and they vanished like empty vapor, who laid 
her linger on the miracles of the mediaeval world, 
and they laded away like summer clouds in a 
twilight sky, is at work in this age, and many 
are the dreams she is dispelling, and many the 
visions she is dissolving. 
Of all the delusions that have spread themselves 
over the earth, making and destroying the philos- 
ophies of the world, none are so thoroughly 
disintegrating as that of Moral Agency.* From 
pole to pole, from zone to zone, all round our 
little planet, men have vainly imagined them- 
selves their own Parcse, the weavers of their own 
destiny. But the old dream of Moral Agency is 
over, and the philosopher now detects the work- 
ing of natural law, as much in the rise of a 
religion or the growth of a crime, as in the revo- 
lution of the seasons and the flowing of the tides. 
* The author does not wish to deny that the phenomena of the 
universe are modified by human agencies, but he believes that 
nothing comes to pass without a process of natural law, however 
modifiable the law may be. EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
5 
The modern historian seeks for law in the rise of 
a dynasty and the murder of a king ; the theolo- 
gian finds in climatic causes the secret of a relig- 
ion, and in the topography of a country the 
cause of a revival; and the psychologist sees in 
the tides of crime that rise and fall, century after 
century—now overflowing the banks of civiliza- 
tion, and now receding almost from view—the 
working of natural laws that cannot be circum- 
vented nor successfully resisted. 
That moral and criminal epidemics have existed 
and still exist, no candid observer will deny. The 
seventeenth century in England and the eight- 
eenth in France are strikingly illustrative of epi- 
demic delusion. In both cases the entire national 
mind was shaken to its very foundation. In each 
there was a period of elegant but profligate litera- 
ture, literature scintillant with wit, but utterly 
heartless. Then came a period of deep and anx- 
ious thought. The common people discussed the 
affairs of the kingdom, and openly criticised the 
Church. Then suddenly there came a period 
of reaction, a period of emotion: the masses not 
only thought, but felt, on questions of Church 
and State. Nothing stopped, nothing could have 
stopped, the onward waves of popular emotion. 
Resistlessly and furiously they rolled on, over 
all barriers, until, breaking in thunder against 6 
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
the walls of the palace, they sent ruin and 
anarchy over the land. In both cases, after the 
restoration of peace, letters revived, and became 
not only immoral but profane. Then came two 
of the wildest commercial schemes the world has 
ever witnessed: in France, Law’s Bank and 
Mississippi scheme, and in England, the South 
Sea scheme. Both schemes were invented the 
same year (1721), and at once both nations became 
utterly deranged over the merest bubbles, which, 
bursting, left thousands of families homeless and 
penniless. From the South Sea scheme alone 
nearly five hundred enterprises as worthless as 
their parent were generated, all of which were 
greedily swallowed by an entirely deranged peo- 
ple. So groundless were those enterprises that, 
at one sitting, a committee of the House of Com- 
mons pronounced eiglity-six of them illegal. One 
enterprise, entitled “ A Company for Carrying 
on an undertaking of great advantage, but Nobody 
to know what it is!” cleared for its founder 
£2000 in six hours, at the end of which time it 
utterly collapsed. 
Nor need we go back a single century for illus- 
tration of the subject. Look in this age, and in 
this country, at Mormonism, with its thousands 
of saints assembled in the valley of Salt Lake. 
If ever a religion was established and a people EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
7 
gathered, on a basis utterly shallow and fictitious, 
that religion was Mormonism, and that people 
the Latter Day Saints. And yet never was there 
a creed more enthusiastically embraced or bravely 
defended. Look for a moment at the origin of 
the faith. Joseph Smith, a man of prodigious 
personal magnetism, but an unscrupulous liar, 
an utter bankrupt and a murderer: this man, 
suddenly and with no reformation of character, 
became an interpreter of God’s will to man, the 
inspired discoverer and translator of a book he 
had the audacity to call divine. On the word 
of this utterly abandoned and profligate man, 
and with no guaranty whatever of his sincerity, 
thousands deliberately forsook their religion, 
turned their backs on their native land, and 
followed the fortunes of the pretender to a new 
and western world. Living openly in relations 
absolutely licentious, and in a condition too inde- 
cent to *be described, he yet pretended to such 
nearness to God as to be able to heal the sick 
and raise the dead. Yet, in the face of all these 
facts, his followers are numbered by thousands. 
Look at the epidemics of homicide, infanticide, 
suicide and poisoning, which have at various 
periods visited the race. Such epidemics of hom- 
icide as occurred between 1588 and 1635. One 
epidemic alone swept from the earth seven of the 8 
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
most distinguished characters in history, from 
William I., of Orange, to Wallenstein, including 
the Duke of Guise, Henry III., the last of the 
Valois Princes, Henry IV., the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, and Gustavus Adolphus: all were assas- 
sinated in a period of forty-seven years. 
Look at the epidemics of infanticide, such an 
epidemic as occurred in Denmark not a century 
ago. Look at the epidemic of suicide twenty 
years ago in France. What reader of history has 
not paused, sickened and terrified over pages that 
chronicle the awful epidemics of crime and 
delusion that followed the plague of 1333, the 
fearful Black Death of the Middle Ages ? 
A word or two as to what is meant by the terms 
moral and criminal epidemics. Crime means 
violation of civil law ; it may or may not be sinful, 
but is always illegal. Crime is one thing and sin 
another. Crime depends on civil law for its 
existence, and if there were no law there could 
be no crime, since crime is a violation of law, and 
non-existent law could not be spoken of as vio- 
lated. 
The Greek word “epidemic” means common 
to many people—seizing on many at the same 
time. The phrase “criminal epidemic,” then, 
signifies crime seizing on many people at the same 
time. Morality I apprehend to consist in obedi- EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
9 
ence to natural law, a violation of which may or 
may not be criminal. A moral epidemic, then, 
signifies vice seizing on many people at the same 
time. In the one case we have crime, and in the 
other vice, assuming ail epidemic form. 
To the infant world all things are wonderful, 
no more the constellations of heaven than the 
experiences of daily life. Before reason, judg- 
ment and volition have disciplined the mind and 
strengthened the understanding, all things are 
strange and mysterious. The infant mind is 
undeveloped; devoid of knowledge and judg- 
ment, it holds in its constitution the possibilities 
of both. Advancing years must develop and 
discipline the understanding, deepen the sulci, 
and enlarge the convolutions of the brain, and 
add knowledge to the mental store; and as 
knowledge arrives mystery departs, wonder sinks 
into abeyance, and neither longer dominate the 
world of thought. But now suppose the years 
bring to the mind few and feeble chances, and 
iron circumstances drive the soul through ways 
that are not Wisdom’s. Suppose, as is the case 
with multitudes, that, conceived and born by 
accident, the infant mind first opens to the light 
of heaven in a circle where passion and ignorance 
contend for mastery. Suppose ignorance and 
passion are inherited and left to grow like weeds 10 
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
in the mental soil. Judgment and reason fail to 
arrive, since the means to their end are neglected. 
The adult thus nurtured goes into the arena of 
daily life with the undeveloped intellect of a 
child, incapable of weighing facts, ignorant of 
causes, superstitious, with the organ of wonder 
large, prepared to believe the most monstrous 
doctrines, and to tremble before the simplest 
phenomena of nature. Thus are thousands thrust 
upon the world to till prisons and hovels, and 
then perish like the brute. Such minds are the 
ready subjects of strong delusion, the victims of 
every new sensation in religion, and every new 
fashion in crime; converted at every revival, and 
tired at in every mob, they profess the dominant 
religion and are guilty of the reigning crime. 
At the mercy of their fears, at the beck of their 
passions, and without judgment to guide them, 
they break against every rock and plunge into 
every whirlpool. 
Imagination continually endeavors to break the 
links which bind her to reason. Let her succeed, 
and there are no fictions, no strange beliefs, no 
remarkable delusions, no extravagant dreams, 
that she will not promulgate. 
Take, as comparatively modern instances, such 
results as those caused by the preaching of 
Peter the Hermit, when not only immense troops EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
11 
of men were driven, like autumn leaves before 
the wind, toward the Holy Land, on the wings of 
his incendiary breath, but even great hosts of 
children thronged to the sea-board to embark for 
the tomb of Jesus; and those produced by the 
efforts of Father Matthew against intemperance, 
when “ all Ireland was wailing at his feet.” These 
great excitements prove not only the power of 
personal magnetism over ignorant and unreflect- 
ing minds, but the intrinsic weakness of the uned- 
ucated intellect. 
The mental and physical motions of the child 
are largely mechanical and automatic. Volition 
is a fruit of later years, that ripens not under the 
early sun of infancy. Nearly all the cries and 
contortions of the infant are but results of reflex 
action proceeding from the medulla oblongata. 
In the child, the cerebro-spinal system is reduced 
to its minimum, and the hemispheres are almost 
convolutionless. Its life is mostly confined to 
that series of ganglia whose nerves communicate 
with the involuntary muscles, and is called the 
organic system, since its office is to sustain animal 
life. 
It is common to look upon infancy as a period 
of suffering; but the notion is a mistaken one, 
the truth being that the infant suffers less than 
the adult. Its cries, and groans, and contortions, 12 
EPIDEMIC DELUSION'S. 
that pierce the maternal heart, have no more to do 
with pain than the swaying and moaning of a 
forest tree in a wind-storm. We have to grow 
into the region of pain, as we grow into other 
regions. We do not enter the world with nervous 
systems completely developed, any more than 
with digestive or secretive systems so developed. 
Every man starts at the beginning, and repeats in 
himself the history of his race. Now, a large part 
of the human race lias not yet outgrown infancy : 
arriving at the years of manhood, it has failed 
to reach those of discretion. I use no figure of 
speech, but strictly adhere to truth, when I say 
that most of the movements of the majority of 
men are automatic, and that the automatical char- 
acter of their movements becomes more and more 
apparent as we descend in the scale of mental 
culture. The mass of mankind, however accom- 
plished in crime, are yet infants in intelligence. 
Sympathy, “ that wonderful instinct that links 
man to man in a social whole,” and is at once the 
cradle of society and the grave of independence, 
is one of the most powerful sources of epidemic 
delusion. And following in its train, and not 
easily distinguishable from it, comes imitation, 
an instinct that, moderately indulged, contributes 
to health, excessively indulged, to disease, and 
that, when wholly ungoverned, becomes a mental EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
13 
bondage: an instinct that, blindly obeyed, lias 
crushed empires, obliterated tribes, depopulated 
cities, and spread sorrow and dismay over a con- 
tinent. They who yield to its seductive influence, 
like sheep follow their leader over a precipice. 
Psychological diseases have always been more 
or less epidemic, and, in a way, contagious. Car- 
ried by the subtle media, sympathy and imitation, 
the influence passes from individual to individual, 
affecting first those whose nervous excitability of 
temperament predisposes to the disorder, and 
then all who are in any way liable to its influence, 
until, sweeping over whole continents, it sinks 
every vestige of humanity in its troubled waters. 
The instinct which prompts to imitation is seated 
in all minds, savage and civilized, ignorant and 
educated ; but its most prominent parts are played 
in the lives of those whose acts are largely autom- 
atic, and whose intellects are undeveloped. A 
familiar example, and one with which you are all 
acquainted, is found in laughter, the contagious 
nature of which you cannot have failed to notice. 
People convulsed with laughter are often unable 
to assign a reason for their mirth: they laugh 
because others laugh. Observe children playing 
in the streets: one will start and run, and all will 
follow ; one shouts, all shout; one strikes a play- 
mate, and a general fight ensues. They scarcely 14 
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
know why they run, or shout, or fight, but they 
run, shout, and fight all the same. Their move- 
ments seem to be volitional, but are merely reflex— 
they seem to be dictated by the cerebrum, but are 
really produced by the medulla oblongata. I 
have noticed from public platforms that when 
one person leaves the lecture-room, like sheep, 
several follow ; when one wearies of the discourse, 
he communicates his sense of uneasiness to others, 
who annoy the lecturer by their uneasiness; he 
coughs or yawns, and at once all who come within 
the range of his influence follow his example. It 
is mostly from epidemic imitation that military 
retreats and religious revivals derive existence. 
“Crime,” says Dr. Elam, “propagates itself 
by infection, like fever and small-pox, and at 
times it seems as if the infection came abroad 
into the atmosphere, and exacted its tributes from 
every class and every district in the country. 
The laws of moral infection and the propagation 
of moral disorders are among the most recondite 
and difficult subjects of contemplation. There is 
something fearful in the very thought that man 
may so abdicate his moral freedom as to bring 
his will and moral nature under the sway of laws 
as imperious and resistless as those which sustain 
and balance the orbits of the stars. But we can 
not be blind to the fact. There is a large class EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
15 
of minds over which great crimes exert a kind 
of fascination, and those who have never trained 
themselves to exercise the responsibilities of moral 
freedom are liable to become the victims of the 
strangest delusions, and catch readily at the moral 
infection which is always lurking, and sometimes 
raging, in the atmosphere of our world. Let a 
woman fling herself from the top of the Monu- 
ment, and the gallery has to be railed in like a 
wild beast’s cage, lest the contagion spread, and 
the Monument yard become the Tyburn of sui- 
cides.” 
My reason for devoting a lecture to the consid- 
eration of moral and criminal epidemics is that 
the subject is one of immediate and vital interest to 
the age in which we live. All around us, at home 
and abroad, for good and evil, the subtle laws 
are at work, and their invisible fingers forever 
weave the wondrous web of events ; and it is the 
duty of students of science to understand those 
laws, detect their use, and guard against their 
abuse. The age in which we live is not free from 
epidemics of delusion and crime. I might instance 
religious enthusiasms, political excitements, and 
social frenzies: the rise of Spiritualism, the 
revival of Materialism, and the new impulse given 
to Socialism. With these you are familiar, and 
some of you will remember an excitement in 16 
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
France which at tiiis hour draws thousands from 
all parts of Europe to Lourdes, to worship the 
Virgin of Massabielle. 
As a religious fanaticism, it is one of the most 
extraordinary that has been recorded in the his- 
tory of this century, and can only be compared 
with the antique celebrations of past ages. It is 
a gigantic exodus, not only of voluntary pilgrims, 
but of several thousand priests, gathered from 
every part of France, around the famed grotto 
of Massabielle. From Paris, Bordeaux, Rlieims, 
Lille, and a hundred towns, pours, day and night, 
through rain and heat, this strange throng of 
pilgrims. Some gnarled and knotted like strong 
trees that have wrestled with the winds of heaven 
for a century, resolute, determined, and fiercely 
enthusiastic. Faces in which there can be found 
no trace of tenderness, sympathy, or even hu- 
manity ; and faces calm and pure and saintly, 
from whose luminous eyes the starlight of the 
spirit never fades away. There are children and 
women, old men who can scarcely stand, and the 
sick, that have to be carried, and the dead that 
died on the march and are borne on ambulances. 
Whither goes this mighty throng? To Lourdes, 
For what? To obtain through prayer the conver- 
sion and regeneration of France. Five hundred 
pilgrims pour into Lourdes, and, kneeling around EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
17 
five different altars erected among the mountains, 
listen by day to the recitation of strange and 
terrific miracles from priests frenzied with excite- 
ment, and by night fill the woods for miles and 
miles with the tumultuous roar of their songs 
and chants, that goes up like the thunder of a 
cataract to mingle with the stars. 
But what started so -wild an excitement in one 
of the most civilized countries, and in this nine- 
teenth century % One would naturally suppose 
nothing short of some great public calamity, a 
famine, a war, or a pestilence; but no! a little 
girl was seized with an ecstasy, and in a vision 
beheld Mary the Queen of Heaven. She told her 
story to the villagers, and at once the whole 
neighborhood was crazed with excitement.* She 
experienced several attacks of hysteria, during one 
of which the Virgin conversed with her, and com- 
manded her to appear before the civil authorities, 
and ask that on the rock on which she kneeled 
there should be erected a chapel. The authorities 
at first remonstrated with the Holy Virgin, com- 
plaining of the extravagance of the project, and 
pleading the poverty of the villagers, but in vain. 
And now, to the shame of France be it said, the 
church is being constructed on the rock. 
The child (Barnadette Soubirons), who was by 
* Yew York Herald, Oct. 5, 1872. 18 
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
no means an impostor, but an invalid, who should 
have been subjected to medical surveillance, has 
entered an institution as a Sister of Charity, while 
her parents are objects of bountiful benefaction. 
These things were not done in secret. The pil- 
grimage to Lourdes was inaugurated in one of the 
grandest cathedrals in Europe, the Notre Dame 
des Victoires, in Paris. From this cathedral the 
pilgrims started at midnight, with flaming torches 
and lighted tapers, and for long, weary, rainy 
days thirty thousand of them moved in and out 
of the intricacies of mountain paths, singing 
psalms as they slowly advanced. It was like an 
immense galaxy of moving lights, and the scene 
from the valley below must have produced an 
indescribable effect. 
Probably no single incident in the pilgrimage 
was better calculated to explain the fanaticism 
which originated and the emotional derangement 
which sustained the movement, than the proces- 
sions formed in the public squares of Lourdes. 
One of them, over a mile long, contained more 
than forty thousand people, who, as they marched, 
sang hymns with one voice. It carried purple, 
violet, orange, blue and green banners, decorated 
with gold and silver and lace. These banners, 
numbering more than three hundred, represented 
all the Provinces of France. The banner of Alsace EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
19 
and Lorraine was draped in black, and carried 
by girls in white. As it passed, the multitude 
pressed frantically forward, and kissed and ca- 
ressed its hanging tassels, and some flung them- 
selves against its folds of sable crape, and were 
borne along by the surging throng. The banner 
from Nantes was so covered with flowers and gold 
that six strong men could not more than support 
it, and the banners from Paris, Bordeaux, and 
Rlieims were equally magnificent. 
The pilgrimage to Paray-le-Monial far out- 
strips in political importance those undertaken to 
Lourdes and La Salette. The railway companies 
having reduced fifty per cent, the fares of the 
trains bound for that shrine, enabled pilgrims to 
flock there from all parts of the country. Several 
of M. Beule’s prefects took on this occasion a 
a zealous initiation in stimulating the religious 
and political zeal of those under their governance 
who were susceptible of becoming votaries to the 
Saone-et-Loire Madonna. M. Belcastel and Count 
de Mon, and officers of MacMahon’s staff, headed 
the pilgrim’s trains which started from Paris. 
M. Ducros publicly patronized the Lyons com- 
mittee charged to make known the special virtues 
of the image at Paray-le-Monial. In the mount- 
ainous Vivaracs district, the gardes cTiampelres 
were employed to distribute pamphlets enjoining 20 
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
the peasants to leave their liocks and herds to 
the guardianship of St. Margaret, she having 
promised the Virgin to take care of the goods 
and chattels of rustics going to Paray-le-Monial. 
The Mayor of an important town in Brittany says 
that on his way to Paris, he found the stations 
at Rennes and le Mans crowded with pilgrims. 
Gens. Charette and De Sonnis sent round—if one 
may be allowed to use so profane a term—the 
fiery cross to the Papal Zouaves in La Vendee 
and along the Loire. Their summons was en- 
thusiastically obeyed ; and these warriors were 
appointed by the Bishop of the diocese in which 
the shrine of Paray-le-Monial is situated to lay 
the banner of the Sacre Coeur, under which they 
had fought at Paray in 1870, beside the relics 
of Our Lady and St. Margaret. The Assemblee 
Nationale, in its glowing telegraphic account of 
the religious ceremonies, estimates the number 
of pilgrims present at 20,000. Another clerical 
journal gives the hymn in which this multitude, 
as with one voice, affirmed its political faith. 
You will be able to judge, from the subjoined 
translation, of the designs harbored by the pro- 
moters of this pilgrimage: 
Royal Henry, Sovereign dear! 
Return, we pray, to our relief; 
Deign to lend a fav’ring ear 
To Gallia in her hour of grief. EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
21 
Without your aid our troubled land 
Must sink beneath the stranger’s heel, 
Must perish by the Teuton’s hand, 
That hand of hardest tempered steel. 
Monsieur Thiers has failed to rouse 
Our martial ardor once so high ; 
To triumph where our foes carouse, 
Our Henry must to us draw nigh. * 
A correspondent of the New York Times, under 
date of July 26, 1873, says: “The pilgrimage of 
Paray-le-Monial was recently made by a large 
party of Deputies from the French National 
Assembly. These gentlemen journeyed from 
Paris with the utmost appearance of solemnity. 
They donned red crosses across their breasts. 
They bore a banner, on one side of which was a 
portrait of a man, representing Jesus, with the 
heart exposed, and the inscription: 4 Cor Jesu 
in te speranlum salus.’ As they marched, they 
sang in loud tones the following hymn, which has 
a strange flavor of politics and piety combined : 
Dieu de Clemence, 
O Dieu vainqueur! 
Sauvez Rome et la France, 
Par votre Sacre Cceur.’ ” 
We speak boastingly of the civilization of this 
age, and the science of this century, and while 
we boast, we imitate the folly of the past, taking 
special care not to omit some of the most disgust- 
ing details. Five years have not elapsed since a 
* London Daily News, June 22, 1873. 22 
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
little village in the centre of our own State became 
the Mecca of a remarkable pilgrimage. Toward it 
hundreds of not only the rude and illiterate, but 
elegant and cultivated, turned their footsteps. 
There were among them clergymen, lawyers, and 
even physicians. For what did these people, so 
varied in social standing and unlike in mental 
culture, go to the little village of Moravia ? That 
they might look on the faces of their departed 
friends, and, what is if possible even more hideous, 
hear the phantoms speak, and see them move 
through the recesses of an old cupboard in a 
darkened room. A woman who was a victim to 
the excitement told me, with an emphasis of 
agony, that in the little village of Moravia, in an 
old rickety cupboard, at the command of a vulgar 
and illiterate woman, who was called the medium, 
her father, who came to his death years ago by 
suicide, exhibited himself with throat cut from 
ear to ear, and through lips dabbled with blood 
syllabled her name. And a gentleman of high 
character and irreproachable veracity assured me 
that he had seen and conversed with his deceased 
wife; and a skeptic who went to Moravia looked 
into that old cupboard, and came away convinced 
of immortality. Do not misunderstand me. I am 
not holding up these men and women to ridicule. 
They were sincere, and sincerity always entitles EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
23 
its possessor to respect. They were intelligent 
and honest, and I mention their cases simply to 
show how easily the mind may be led astray and 
induced to adopt the most fantastic faiths. 
In closing, let us for a moment consider the 
moral and hygienic means best adapted to the pre- 
vention of epidemic delusions. All may be named 
in three words that in themselves sound almost 
hopeless—the three words, Healthy Public 
Sentiment : a public sentiment which shall make 
epidemics of intellectual disorder impossible, by 
furnishing a moral soil in which superstition can 
find no root, and an atmosphere too bracing for 
the growth of intellectual derangements. Such 
remedy may seem impracticable, on account both 
of its costliness and vastness, but it is not imprac- 
ticable : it has been tried again and again in given 
districts, and has succeeded when other things 
have failed. But the trouble with public sentiment 
is that it is evanescent and spasmodic, aroused 
more by immediate need than permanent convic- 
tion, but when aroused it is almost always suc- 
cessful. So soon as men ceased to believe in 
witchcraft, witches ceased to exist; a little ridi- 
cule and a great deal of general indifference 
accomplished in a few years what centuries of 
persecution failed to effect. So soon as the public 
ceased to think of Flagellants, the Flagellants 
ceased to whip themselves, and when we learn to 24 
EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 
dismiss Spiritualism, the ghosts will go out like 
the flame of a candle. Whenever Rationalism 
and Science have overcome superstition and igno- 
rance, epidemic delusions have disappeared. 
I wish to make the subject of which I have 
treated personal. How will you assist in the 
production of such a public sentiment as shall 
make moral and criminal epidemics impossible? 
You will all contribute in your several capacities, 
but in general I may say that it is your duty to 
withhold your sympathy from all such move- 
ments as either result from superstition or con- 
tribute to its growth. Preserve a calm, intelligent 
and unwavering faith in Rational Science, and in 
whatever way opportunity may indicate, whether 
on the public platform, in the printed page, by the 
bed of sickness, or in the seclusion of private life, 
always teach, both by precej)t and example, a 
quiet frame of mind, self-control, and an unwav- 
# 
ering faith in Science. It is to the young and 
growing Rationalism of this age that I look for 
the Anal abolition of both Spiritualism and Mate- 
rialism, and for the introduction of a new system 
which shall neither attribute to the soul an exist- 
ence it cannot have, nor to matter powers it does 
not possess; which shall neither kneel at the 
shrine of the spirit, nor bow before the altars of 
the flesh. Let it be your glory that you have con- 
tributed something toward its establishment. APPENDIX. 
The following works have been consulted in the preparation of 
this lecture: 
A Physician’s Problems, by Dr. Charles Elam. 
Annales d’Hygiene Publiqne, by M. Marc. 
Anatomy of Suicide, by Dr. Forbes Winslow. 
Buchanan’s Researches in Asia. 
Christian Times, January 25, 1856. 
Epidemic Delusions, by Dr. Carpenter. 
Esquirol’s Essay on Suicide, in the Dictionary des Sciences Med- 
icales. 
History of Persia, by Sir John Malcolm, vol i. 
Hecker’s Epidemics of the Middle Ages. 
Lecky’s History of European Morals. 
Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. 
Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, by Thomas 
De Quincey. 
Secret Societies of the Middle Ages. 
Von Hammer’s History of the Assassins. 
Wharton and Stille’s Medical Jurisprudence, 1873. 26 
APPENDIX. 
The following table of Epidemic Mental Diseases is from Cham 
bers’ Encyclopaedia, vol. iv., p. 91, 1872 : 
POPULAR NAMES. 
FORM OF DI8- 
YEAR. 
NUMBER 
AUTHORITY. 
EASE. 
AFFECTED. 
St. Vitus—St. John’s— 
Dance, 
Chareamania 
1374 
Hundreds 
Hecker. 
Lycanthropia 
1523 
Calmiel. 
Possession 
Convulsionaries of 
Demonomania 
1642, etc. 
“ 
St. Mcdard, 
Theomania 
1731 
«« 
Incendiarism 
Pyromania 
1800 
Many 
Marc. 
Witchcraft 
Demonopathia 
Various 
Thousands 
Various. 
Suicide 
Melancholia 
“ 
Esquirol. 
Visions 
Delusions 
“ 
(Brierede, 
(Boismont 
Timoria, Panic 
Panphobia 
1845 
Many 
Edin. Rev. 
1849. 
“Emotions which would not affect us when alone become over- 
powering when striking us in connection with others. Hysterical 
symptoms, when not promptly repressed, in times of general 
religious excitement, may in this way become epidemic. Dr. 
Davidson, in his history of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, 
gives us instances of this. Speaking of a period in East Tennessee, 
in which these manifestations were very injudiciously encouraged, 
he tells us that ‘ the subject was instantaneously seized with spasms 
or convulsions in every muscle, nerve and tendon. His head was 
jerked or thrown from side to side with such rapidity that it was 
impossible to distinguish his visage, and the most lively fears were 
entertained lest he should dislocate his neck or dash out his brains. 
His body partook of the same impulse, and was hurried on by 
jerks over every obstacle, fallen trunks of trees, or, in a church, 
over pews and benches, apparently to the most imminent danger 
of being bruised and mangled. It was useless to attempt to hold 
or restrain him, and the paroxysm was permitted gradually to 
exhaust itself. An additional motive for leaving him to himself 
was the superstitious notion that all attempt at restraint was resist- 
ing the Spirit of God.’”—Wharton and Stille’s Medical Jurispru- 
dence, yol. i, p. 630. APPENDIX. 
27 
• “Most of the supposed cases of supernatural possession fall under 
this head. Take in addition to the above the following, which 
occurred in Kentucky in the movements of 1810-15. A man who 
was undoubtedly deranged, and who had in early life been a bold 
and enthusiastic hunter in the wilderness of which Western Ken- 
tucky was composed, became deeply impressed with a religious en- 
thusiasm, which exhibited itself in the same way that all his other 
impulses exhibited themselves—through the mechanism of the 
hunting mania. He became a sort of fanatical Der Freyschutz. In 
order to resist the devil, and make him flee, he contended that it 
was necessary to tree him, and to give him chase, just as we would 
a wolf whom we found prowling among our sheep. As the meet- 
ings he convoked were held in a grove, one of the congregation 
would suddenly start in pursuit of the devil, an exercise in which a 
number of others equally excitable would immediately join. This 
was called the “ running exercise,” and became the first stage in 
the series of movements by which the meetings were afterwards 
made memorable. Climbing a tree after the devil was the next 
movement, which was called the “ climbing exercise." In the ecstacy 
of the moment, one individual was seized with a propensity to 
bark, a movement to which the rest were irresistibly impelled, 
though they used every effort to check the propensity. This exer- 
cise, which was called “treeing the devil," was accompanied with 
such a scene of barking and jumping as to destroy any remaining 
appearance of reason. The epidemic spread to other fields than 
that of demon-hunting. On one occasion, one individual was 
seized with an insane propensity to play marbles during divine 
service, when others involuntarily joined him. And so far did 
the mania extend, that a series of other juvenile games were intro- 
duced and followed with the same irresistible vehemence by the 
congregation. Absurd as this may appear, the epidemic lasted for 
some months, and its history has now passed into the records of our 
Western States as part of the materials on which the annals of 
Western immigration will rest.”—Ibidem. 28 
APPENDIX. 
“ The instinct of Imitation is specially developed in persons of 
defective education or civilization. Savages copy quicker and 
better than Europeans. Like children, they have a natural faculty 
for mimicry, and eannot refrain from imitating everything they sea 
There is in their minds nothing to offset this tendency to imitation. 
Every well-constructed man has within himself a considerable 
reserve of ideas upon which to fall back; this resource is wanting 
in the savage and in the child ; they live in all the occurrences 
which take place before them ; their life is bound up in what they 
see and hear ; they are the playthings of external influences. In 
civilized nations, persons without culture are in the like situation. 
Send a chambermaid and a philosopher into a country the language 
of which neither of them is acquainted with, and it is likely that 
the chambermaid will learn it before the philosopher. He has 
something else to do ; he can live with his own thoughts. As for 
her, if she cannot talk, she is undone. The instinct of imitation 
is in an inverse ratio to the power of mental abstraction.”—Fernand 
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Parturition Without Pain; 
OR, 
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