Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1889-08-14
MEDICINE LODGE. KANSAS. WEDNESDAY. AUGUST ~

semole In their course those arising from
simple physical contagious. Sometimes
they take spreading or epidemic charac-
ter after the manner of the so-called catch
ing diseases with which we are most
familiar, and are seen to widen into great
epidemic outbreaks, extending over large
tracts OF country, and causing the
strangest of effects known in history. One
OF these marvellous outbreaks of mental
contagious disease, not TO name any more,
was the dancing mania of the fourteenth
century, during which assemblages of men
and women who had come out of Germany
to AK la Chapelle, united by one common
delusiop, formed circles, hand in hand, and.
appearing to have lost all control over their
senses, continued dancing, regardless of
the bystanders, for hours together in wild
delirium, until at length they fell to the
ground in state of utter exhaustion, pant
Ing. senseless and laboring for breath, vet
not lnfreQuently rising after Q rest and
continuing the motion until, In many in
stances, they died from the effort.
At other times these outbreaks from men.
tai contagion, in which one victim has fol-
lowed another, have taken what, in regard
to more ordinary known diseases, is called
the sporadic form--that is to say, have
been developed or have broken out in some
beyond the boundaries of the locality. An
outbreak of a convulsive type, arising from
fear, once occurred at a mandatory at
Holden Bridge, in Lancashire, In which
outbreak over twenty persons, taking the
contagton from one individual, were at
tackled most severely, but without communi-
eating the affection beyond the place where
1t broke out. Like the common contagious
diseases, these diseases of mental contagion
nave been known to have their seasonal
proclivities. The ordinary spreading dis
eases, such as measles, scarlet fever
cholera, typhus, have each their favorable
seasons OF intensity and decline, their max
lmum and their minimum periods 1t is the
same with the affections of mental type
which spring from contagious influences.
In the Shetland islands contagious con-
vulsive affection, which was ultimately
cured and prevented by moral means alone,
broke out in the year 1917 during the sum.
mer months, and recurred every year dur
ing the same months until it was finally
disposed Of. In like manner suicide, which
may be looked on az distinct form of men,
tai disease, is of a contagious character, so
contagious that during the reign of the first
Napoleon the sentry boxes of station had
20 be burned because one soldier set the ex-
ample of hanging himself in a sentry-box.
dlSO has It's sea on OF 0elght and de-
cline, its maximum being reached in June
and its minimum in February, like true
epidemic. Another singular and important
characteristic quality of the contagious
mental diseases-one of immense impor-
tance to remember, and one which links
their phenomena very closely with those of
the common contagious diseases-is what
may be called the line and order of develop.
ment, course and decline. The common con-
tagious diseases usually commence from
single point, rapidly increasing in intensity,
and then decline often as suddenly as thew
came on the field. The same is seen in the
contagious mental diseases. Despine illus.
trates this very cogently from the contagion
of the duel. In the beginning it is neces-
sary to have some great cause to induce the
disease of mind which leads to a first con-
test Of dueling But let the contagion go on.
and soon the merest pretext is sufficient to
excite the phenomenon, until at last it
ceases altogether for the time, as if it were
worn out by its own excessive fury and
folly.