Page
One Girl Faints. Another Shouts
Three More Become Hysterical
AND THEN
200 DANCE
youths are Crowds would
THE CHINA MAIL, JULY 20, 1937.
some degree. Some much more that othe
Suppose I hypnotise a man, give him a sour. emon to suck and tell him it is sweet orange. Suppose
rose in the Puritan village of Sa-he-smacks his lips with delight.
over) Exactly the same principle is at lem, Massachusetts, spread
special the whole of Britain's American work. But by means of a colony, and led to the hanging of technique, I have made him so sug- gestible that he accepts an obvious- many innocent people.
ly false “suggestion.
In that year ten young girls from nine to twenty in age
meet at the parsonage.
use
Grow
more
TWENTY girls and you on street in their gather in the negress servant thrilled them with than my of the men reduggestible
Suddenly, a girl's hysteric laugh and whirl in a delirious dance.
is heard and then a sob. continues to laugh and sob. a youth turns sick.
She
They would scream and form un- and til they fell to the ground in con-
vulsions.
>The atmosphere is electric. - In a -~ few moments eight of them are
loghing and sobbing.
"Pandemonium reigns. The man- ageretphones for help and ambu- lances carry the eight to hospital.
Strange,” he says. Then he feels queer and is taken home.
They call it mass-hysteria.
Throughout history, these men tal epidemics have been common.. There was the Dancing Mania în ---the~fourteenth century. Beginning erein Germany, it spread to Belgium—
---thence over Europe.
For two centuries on and off
it raged.
THE
A
IN
a
There parson's West Indian
ghost stories, a little fortune-tell ing, a little harmless table-rapping. After a time, these girls began to show peculiar symptoms. They
them.
if
suggestions They will accept that they would never accept alone.
WILD ECSTASY!
writhed
can
Every great orator is a hynotist. Some dashed their brains against moaned and tossed and
and trembled.
The ease with which you wall.
They crawled under tables and hypnotise a crowd or an individual
depends on three things. chairs.
First The doctor gave his opinion. It
–The strength of the emo- - without a shadow of doubt tions that you are playing witchcraft.
Those who came to watch were smitten and joined the crazy circle..
Music sometimes cured them. Later, in the seventeenth century, when a similar epidemic swept Italy, they blamed it on the bite of >the tarantula spider.
Lively music was composed to banish the disease, and to this day such tunes are known as tarantel-
after the spider, las
was-s
If a person is timid and full of The negress and two completely fear, he can easily be panicked.
I
innocent older women were ar- rested as “witches.”
an
In court, the "afflicted children” writhed and moaned and did their tricks but only when they Then, in 1692, a mental infection were brought near the prisoners.
WORLD GOES BY By ULYSSES"
CRANKY friend of mine, see-
ing me smoking" a: cigar of
Loud cheers for all of us,
Haw, haw, haw.
we never make a fuss, Another fellow's sister is
A crowd, that is angry and full of hate, can easily be “suggested" into acts of cruelty.
Secondly. One the strength of one's mental control.
For the Judge, the jury and the
Fatigue, fear and emotional assembled crowd,, that was suffi tension weaker control and make cient. The accused were guilty:
'people more suggestible. So does Throughout the summer gaols ill-health. So does alcohol. were crowded with men and women, accused of magic and witchcraft. A special court was set up by the Governor of the Colony.
The young girls rarely failed to "do their stuff.'
The hangings began. At least twenty innocents died.
Until the children accused the and
Governor's wife of bewitching always them. That was going too
as
safe with us, We're officers and gentlemen, we have said before, Loud cheers for all. of us, haw, haw,
haw.
sorts the other day, reminded me that the most active ingredient in We never show our feelings
smoke is carbon monoxide, -tobacco
a deadly poison, one or two drops of which in concentrated form can kill a dog. That may be, but I am not a dog (though some say I am a dirty one), and carbon monoxide isn't concentrated in a Corona ́or even in my battered old $2.50 pipe. Besides, after absorbing carbon Our conduct at a party is the envy
of Boy Scouts; monoxide for so many years, I have.
with Those of my We always dance lost all fear of it. readers who decide to give
and chatter to the trouts, up smoking as a result of this warn- We drink a toast to beauty, the re-
giment and the corps, ing may send their cigars to me, in large or small lots.
*
Jolly Good
Show, Sir
:
The following masterpiece,
-by
hostesses
Loud cheers for all of us, - ha
haw, haw.
If any of is fall in love we do the
decent thing.
We interview her people buy the girl a ring;
Nat Gubbins, appears in the "Sun-We take her home at ten o'clock
day Express." It is a lyric suggest-
leave her at the door,
In New York I myself have seen a less dangerous form of mass- hysteria.
In the mass-hysterias that occur in factories the odds are that there is something more than suggestion
that is merely the last straw. Resistance has previously been broken down by fatigue, by fumes, even by bad weather, prolonged rain, fog or what not.
Thirdly. By the strength of the suggestion.
-If factory-workers, for instance, are discontented or fatigued and have lost some of their control, the slightest suggestion may start an epidemic—by imitation of the first person who behaves hysterically.
A mass-hysteria results.
A crowd of several thousand ne- sardines, packed like
But a crowd can always be hyp-. groes twitching in hysterical ecstasy, notised if the suggestion is suf- Yelling to the negro “Father Di- ficiently strong. vine” whom two million people ad- dress as "God.”:
Every dictator knows the hypno- tising power of megaphones, one- was blind and now I can see, sided radio a propaganda, intensive
campaigns. Thank you." God.”
Aimed at the crowd rather than at the individual. “I was dying and you raised me
Thank you, God.”
My neighbour jammed his elbow in my face, as he gave birth to his emotional relief:
Therein lies the danger of mass- hypnotism. It can be abused or it
I was in prison and you took can be used to good purpose.
;
ed by a visit to the Horse Show, Loud cheers for all of us, haw, me out. Thank you, Gód.”: where officers and gentleman from haw, haw. all over the world and pükka sahibs with their nightly.
--
mem-sahibe gathered We much regret that one of us to
our undying. shame, We're soldiers of the Empire, The other night spoke lightly some fair woman's name; we're servants of the crown, We never do a dirty trick or let a We demand his resignation for the
woman down, t
honour of the corps,
We're officers and gentlemen, we're No cheers for one of us, haw, haw,
British to the core,
Loud cheers for all of us, haw, haw,
haw.
Jolly good show, sir,
~Jolly good show.
Never lose caste,
· Never-let-go.
We're officers and gentlemen,
We're British to the core,
haw
- Dam bad form, sir,
Dam bad show.
Never lose caste, sir,
Never let go.
We're officers and
We're British tontlemen,
the core,
Loud cheers for all of us,
Haw, haw, haw.
A discontented crowd is always easy to hypnotise so is a dis- contented nation.
In the long run, the real and only What is it? This mass-hysteria? safeguard against harmful mass- Mass-hypnotism. -You- begin to hypnotism is a people who are con- |understand it once you understand tented in their work, contented in
the fundamental principle of hyp- their play, and in good health.
notism.
That fundamental principle suggestion."
They have a stability that is the best protection against national de- cay. The best bulwark against the «enemies of democracy. The best For instance, "If I say to you, “My word, how ill you look. What insurance against national unhap-
piness. on earth has happened to you the odds are you won't feel too good.
You have accepted my "sugges- tion."
Everyone
"""suggestible"
The secret of the Briton think is, that he has more of to that stability than most nations.