Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/677

 or the self-deceived victims of their own illusions. Under what category, for instance, should we place the "biting nuns" who appeared in rapid succession in the convents of Germany, Holland, and Rome? This extended mania arose simply from the spontaneous act of one nun attempting to bite a companion—immediately the whole sisterhood fell to biting each other. The news of this extraordinary occurrence was told from place to place, and "biting nuns" became a terror and a nuisance, over large portions of Europe in the fifteenth century; this mania proved irrepressible until exhaustion and reaction set in, terminating its abnormal absurdities. In France another foolish epidemic of imitation seized upon many of the conventual houses. A nun one day commenced to imitate the mewing of a cat, and incontinently the other Sisters present fell to mewing. Finally the nuns took to mewing in concert for hours at a time; persuasions and commands for once failed to produce obedience. The mewing nuisance continued unabated, until the whole sisterhood were threatened with the entrance of the military, who it was announced were "coming to whip them with iron rods." The fear of these rough chastisers finally effected a cure.

That such scenes should happen, through nervous sympathy, in secluded assemblages of women, is not so very remarkable, at least is not inexplicable on nervo-physiological grounds; but we find even more disastrous examples among men, even those habitually living in the open air, within the ordinary conditions of life, and accustomed to muscular labor, which is a great tamer of the nerves. One of the most extraordinary scenes ever witnessed in wonder-producing Europe was enacted in Aix-la-Chapelle and other cities, commencing in 1374, when an assemblage of persons appeared in the famous Westphalian city, who had "danced their way through Germany." At one period the column was estimated to consist of 30,000 persons. In Metz alone there were 1,100. These people, men, women, and children, animated by an imitative delusion, apparently without any power of self-control, danced and leaped for hours at a time in the public streets of cities and on the highways of the countries through which they passed. Nothing could stop them, and they only ceased when exhausted muscles could do no more, when they fell to the ground, suffering more or less from this violent and spasmodic action. The first bands which appeared were, it is charitable to suppose, composed of sporadic cases of victims of that terrible nervous disease known in our day as St. Vitus's dance, and other nervous afflictions such as epilepsy, whom accident or sympathy had brought into companionship; but as these, at first few in number, proceeded from place to place, they were joined by others who, up to that time, had betrayed no symptoms of ill health or. insanity, but who, attracted by the unusual sight, first followed and wondered, ending by joining the leaping, dancing crowd, to the amazement of their friends with robuster nerves, who were able to resist the fascination.