Hecker in the edition of his work referred to has also a treatise on child pilgrimages.52 These pilgrimages, like the dancing mania, occurred in the Middle Ages. The greatest was the boy crusade in the year 1212. The passion to repossess the Holy Land then had its grip on Catholic Europe. The first impulse to the child pilgrimages was given by a shepherd-boy, who had revelations and ecstatic seizures, and held himself to be an ambassador of the Lord. Soon thirty thousand souls came to partake of his revelations; new child-prophets and miracle-workers arose; the children of rich and poor flocked together from all quarters; parents were unable to restrain them, and some even began to urge them. A host of boys, armed and unarmed, assembled at Vendôme, and started for Jerusalem with a boy-prophet at their head. They got to Marseilles, and embarked on seven large ships. Two ships were wrecked, and not a soul was saved. The other five ships reached Bougia and Alexandria, and the young crusaders were all sold as slaves to the Saracens. In Germany child-prophets arose, especially in the Rhine countries and far eastward. An army of them gathered together, crossed the Alps, and reached Genoa. They were soon scattered; many perished; many were retained as servants in foreign lands; some reached Rome. A second child's pilgrimage occurred twenty-five years later. It was confined to the city of Erfurt. One thousand children wandered, dancing and leaping, to Armstadt, and were brought back in carts. Another child's pilgrimage from Halle, in Suabia, to Mount St. Michel in Normandy, occurred in 1458.
52 Translated by Robert H. Cooke, M. R. C. S.
In the convent of Yvertet in the territory of Liège, in 1550, the inmates were seized with a leaping and jumping malady. The disorder began with a single individual, and was soon propagated.
Sometimes the convulsive disorders of early days, especially those occurring in convents, were associated with the strange delusion that the subjects of them were changed into lower animals. Various names have been given to disorders of this kind, such as lycanthropia or wolf madness, zoomania or animal madness, etc. Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy gives an interesting summary of these disorders, which are also discussed by Levick.
In 1760 a religious sect known as the Jumpers prevailed in Great Britain. They were affected with religious frenzy, and jumped continuously for hours. Other jumping epidemics have appeared at different times, both in Great Britain and in this country.
The New England witchcraft episode is of historical interest in connection with this subject of epidemic hysteria. This excitement occurred during the latter part of the seventeenth century. Adults and children were its subjects. The Rev. Cotton Mather records many cases, some of which illustrate almost every phase of hysteria. Individuals who were seized with attacks, which would now be regarded as hysterical or hystero-epileptic, were supposed to have become possessed through the machinations of others. Those who were supposed to be possessed were tried, condemned, and executed in great numbers. Many accused themselves of converse with the devil. The epidemic spread with such rapidity, and so many were executed, that finally the good sense of the people came to the rescue.
The nervous epidemics, nearly all religious, which have occurred in this country have usually been during the pioneer periods, and have therefore appeared at different eras as one part of the country after another has been developed. Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and neighboring States were visited time and again. Even to-day we occasionally hear of outbreaks of this kind in remote or primitive localities, whether it be in the far South-west or in the woods of Maine.
David W. Yandell53 has published a valuable paper on “Epidemic Convulsions,” the larger part of the materials of which were collected by his father for a medical history of Kentucky. From this it would appear the convulsions were first noticed in the revivals from 1735 to 1742. Many instances are related of fainting, falling, trance, numbness, outcries, and spasms. The epidemic of Kentucky spread widely, reappeared for years, and involved a district from Ohio to the mountains of Tennessee, and even to the old settlements in the Carolinas. Wonderful displays took place at the camp-meetings. At one of these, where twenty thousand people were present, sobs, shrieks, and shouts were heard; sudden spasms seized upon scores and dashed them to the ground. Preachers went around in ecstasy, singing, shouting, and shaking hands. Sometimes a little boy or girl would be seen passionately exhorting the multitude, reminding one of the part taken by the children in the epidemics of the Middle Ages. A sense of pins and needles was complained of by many; others felt a numbness and lost all control of their muscles. Some subjects were cataleptic; others were overcome with general convulsions.
53 Brain, vol. iv., Oct., 1881, p. 339 et seq.
The term jerks was properly applied to one of the forms of convulsion. Sometimes the jerking affected a single limb or part. The Rev. Richard McNemar has given a graphic description of this jerking exercise in a History of the Kentucky Revival. The head would fly backward and forward or from side to side; the subject was dashed to the ground, or would bounce from place to place like a football, or hop around with head, limbs, and trunk twitching and jolting in every direction. Curiously, few were hurt. Interesting descriptions of the jerks can be found in various American autobiographical and historical religious works. In such books as the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, a Western Methodist, for instance, striking accounts of some of the phases of these epidemics are to be found. Lorenzo Dow in his Journal, published in Philadelphia in 1815, has also recorded them.