Mass hysteria: An epidemic of the mind?
An outbreak of fatal dancing fits among members of the same
community, men suddenly gripped by the sickening fear of losing their
genital organs, and teenagers having mysterious symptoms after watching
an episode of their favorite TV series — these are all instances of what
we often refer to as “mass hysteria.”
overhead shot of crowd
What is mass hysteria, and how does it manifest? We investigate.
“They danced together, ceaselessly, for hours or days, and in wild
delirium, the dancers collapsed and fell to the ground exhausted,
groaning and sighing as if in the agonies of death. When recuperated,
they […] resumed their convulsive movements.”
This is a description of the epidemic of “dancing plague” or “dancing
mania” as given by Benjamin Lee Gordon in Medieval and Renaissance
...