The following article, which appeared in the October 1858 issue of The Knickerbocker, attempts to establish connections between the frontier jerking exercise and other forms of “spasmodic” “muscular activity” in ancient history. Much of the anonymous author’s analysis is either erroneous or derivative; and yet, the appearance of the article in one of the most prominent literary magazines of the nineteenth century suggests that somatic phenomena of the Great Revival eventually entered mainstream American religious discourse. “Jerks: Ancient and Modern” may have been published in response to a recent outbreak of the jerks in Illinois, but the article also reflects an emerging interest in the study of comparative world religions among eastern elites. Click here for the complete 1858 volume of The Knickerbocker.
FROM the earliest periods of history and tradition, the rites of worship, especially among heathen nations, have been very generally attended by bodily contortion and spasmodic action. The idea seems to have taken fast hold of the worshippers, that the divine afflatus could only manifest itself by unusual nervous and muscular activity. This element of worship the mercurial Greek seems to have derived from the Oriental portion of his conglomerate mythology, rather than from that of the more staid and impassive Egyptian.
Thus, at the Oracle of Dodona, the earliest locality where the Indian mythology established itself, the answers at first transmitted through the whispering of the leaves of the ancient oak, or announced by the brazen clangor of the chain-smitten caldrons, were presently communicated by the lips of the priestesses, who, rushing from the temple with glaring eyes, dishevelled hair, and foaming lips, uttered in broken and incoherent sentences the words on which, at times, hung the fate of empires.
At Delphi, also, the priestesses on the accession of the prophetic fury, leaped from the tripod, and amid frantic cries, beating of their breasts, and terrific spasms, gave utterance to the messages of the gods.
The magicians, or magi, who for ages controlled the destinies of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Median kingdoms, uttered their prophecies, and performed their miracles only when in the state of ecstasy.
The evidences of this condition being deemed indispensable by the diviners, soothsayers, and priests of heathen nations, for successful prediction or malediction, are abundant in the Old Testament Scriptures. Thus, when Balak summoned Balaam to pronounce on the hosts of Israel the blighting, withering curse which should whelm them in utter ruin, Balaam required that the conditions most favorable for the induction of a trance should be observed; and his repeated prophecies give internal evidence, apart from his own assertion, that he was, while uttering them, in the ecstatic state.
Again, when Elijah had assembled the priests of Baal, almost a thousand in number, for the contest which should decide the question of supremacy between Baal and Jehovah, his mocking apostrophe, and their subsequent action, denote that the expected condition of ecstasy had not manifested itself.
Even among the Romans, whose fine physical development and unimaginative temperament were less favorable to hysterical emotion than any of the other nations of antiquity, the augurs, diviners, and soothsayers, from the time of the priest-king Numa to the merging of the republic in the empire, seldom uttered their predictions with positiveness, except when under the influence of the ‘divine afflatus.’
Christianity recognized no such adjuncts in its worship, and though occasionally the utterance in unknown tongues threatened the introduction of a false inspiration, and the admission of revelations not bearing the stamp of divine authenticity, yet these sources of error were soon detected, and driven from the Christian Church, finding not unfrequently, however, a resting-place among some of the sects of errorists, so numerous in the second, third, and fourth centuries. With some of these, the phenomena of the ecstatic condition, in all its intensity, formed no inconsiderable portion of their worship. Among the unenlightened nations of the earlier centuries of the Christian era, these manifestations still retained their ascendency. In the Scandinavian tribes, the Scald, who combined the functions of priest, prophet, and bard, uttered his ‘sagas’ only in the trance state; and not unfrequently the Berserker, under the influence of this preternatural exaltation, rushed forth to deeds of wonderful prowess, or of fearful crime.
The Indian fakir, the howling and dancing dervishes of Egypt; the gree-gree man, and the obeah of the African tribes; the ‘great medicine’ of our North-American Indians, are all examples, which have come down to our own times, of the supposed necessity of this condition to the sacerdotal character.
But it was not solely among the priests that this violent and apparently involuntary spasmodic action occurred. It formed no inconsiderable feature of the early Greek festivals. Not to speak now of the original ‘Bacchantic Fury,’ which we deem of a some what different character, the Dionysia, or festivals in honor of Bacchus, the Saturnalia and Floralia, and above all, the festivals in honor of Cybele, were marked by the most violent and extra ordinary displays of muscular and nervous action. The Corybantes, the Galli, and the Bacchantes, who were the special devotees of Cybele and Bacchus, danced, shouted, ran about with loud cries and howlings, beating on timbrels, clashing cymbals, sounding pipes, and cutting their flesh with knives.
Jamblicus, a Syrian, who died A.D. 333, a protegé of Julian the Apostate, and an earnest advocate of the Neo-Platonic theology, whose writings are rather valuable for the extracts from early writers they contain, than for any originality or profundity in his own speculations, has given us in his ‘De Mysteriis’ an account of a fountain at Colophon, near Ephesus, whose waters produced in those who drank, this ecstatic state. After giving an explanation of the causes of the inspiration thus induced, which is so full of the absurdities of the Neo-Platonic school as to be altogether unintelligible, he proceeds: ‘According to these diversities, there are different signs, effects, and works of the inspired: thus, some will be moved in their whole bodies; others, in particular members; others, again, will be motionless. Also they will perform dances and chants—some well, some ill. The bodies, again, of some, will seem to dilate in height, others in compass; and others, again, will seem to walk in air.’
Remarkable as these phenomena were, and doubtful as we may be of the particular cause which had induced them, there is room for belief that they were in many, perhaps in most cases, voluntary; that the persons affected could induce, control, or discontinue the spasmodic action at their will, if that will were vigorously exerted.
There is, however, another class of cases bearing considerable resemblance to these, where the will has less power, and the amount of hallucination is much greater. To the epidemic appearance of these, we have applied the homely but expressive Saxon word, Jerks, as expressing more fully and thoroughly than any other, and with less hinting at causes, the characteristics of these manifestations.
The first jerking epidemic of which we have any account, occurred so far in the remote past that we cannot give its precise date. The traditions of it are interwoven with the Greek and Indian mythology, and it is a matter of no little difficulty to separate fact from fiction in the narrative.
When the Bacchus of the Greek mythology (the Siva of the Hindoo) made his riotous journey westward, there followed in his train a mighty host, mostly women, dancing, shouting, bearing aloft the thyrsus, often whirling rapidly for hours, and only ceasing these frenzied motions from sheer exhaustion, when they sank down on the spot where they were, in a profound slumber, to awake and renew their frantic dance on the following day. Every city and town added to the number, and the contagion spread so rapidly, that, in many places, the female population was seriously diminished. No opposition availed to stay the course of the epidemic: whoever attempted it, was torn to pieces by the women, under the influence of the hallucination that they were destroy ing wild beasts. Mothers slew their sons, sisters their brothers, and fathers their children.
Though represented as occurring under the leadership of the God of Wine, this epidemic had few or none of the features of intoxication; and the ancient historians have named it ‘the Bacchantic fury.’
In the ages that followed, the Corybantic dances, which, as we have already noticed, as well as those of the Telchini, the Curetes, and the Dactyli, partook somewhat of the same character, occasionally assumed, over a limited region of country, the epidemic form, and were attended with similar hallucinations; but for several centuries, there was no repetition of this wide-spread and terrible disorder.
The prevalence of what the Jews regarded as demoniac possession, about the period of our SAVIOUR’s advent, is by many writers considered as an example of this peculiar frenzy. That in many particulars, it bore a striking resemblance to the preceding and succeeding epidemics, must be admitted; but there were also important points of difference, and we are not willing, therefore, to disturb the faith of those who see in it an exemplification of special Satanic malignity.
The advent of Christianity, though in itself furnishing no encouragement or countenance to such extravagances, was yet, in some instances, made the cloak for fanatical excitements, that rivalled the Corybantic dances in violence and in the character of their hallucinations. In the second century, the Montanists had drawn all eyes to Phyrgia by their fierce fanaticism and apparent insensibility to the most cruel tortures; in the fourth century, the Circumcellimes, by their violence and fury, almost made mankind believe the Bacchantic era had returned; and the Flagellants, commencing in the same century their self-inflicted stripes, waxed bolder and bolder, till, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under Rainer’s leadership, they traversed the streets of the continental cities in puris naturabilus, inflicting at every step blows upon their own shoulders, so severe as to lacerate the flesh. These excesses and improprieties finally led to the prohibition of their public exercises, by the Papal authority. In their case there was, according to their own statements, an entire insensibility to pain, and an evident cheromania, or mental exaltation, which partook of the character of insanity.
But perhaps the most strongly-marked epidemics of this affection that occurred during the middle ages, were the Tarantisrnus of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the Dance of St. John or St. Vitus, in the fourteenth and fifteenth. The Tarantismus was long attributed to the bite of a spider—the Aranea Tarantula of the naturalists. It is now, however, conceded that this had nothing to do with the phenomena, which was really a species of insanity. Its symptoms are thus described by Baglier: ‘Those who are affected with Tarantismus are prone to seek out solitary places, grave-yards and the like, and there stretch themselves upon the graves as if they were dead. Sometimes they howl like dogs, groan, sigh, leap and run wildly about, strip themselves entirely, express strong liking or dislike for certain colors, and take great delight in being soundly beaten, pleading for stronger and sturdier blows.’ Other writers state, that they would ask to have the blows inflicted with iron bars, and that they would sustain, and apparently be relieved by, pressure with weights, which would have crushed them under ordinary circumstances. The cure for this singular affection was music, under the influence of which they danced for many hours together for four or six days, and after violent perspiration recovered.
The Dance of St. John was almost a counterpart of the ‘Bacchantic fury,’ and was probably induced by similar causes. The terrible pestilence, known in history as the Black Death, had ravaged most of the countries of Europe in 1372 and 1373, and been followed by famine, terror, and great nervous excitement. On Midsummer’s Day, A.D. 1374, a large body of men and women, from various parts of Germany, appeared at Aachen, (Aix-la-Chapelle,) in the market-place, and joining hands, danced for many hours, paying no attention to those around them, till finally they fell to the ground in a state of trance. Their abdomens were greatly tumefied, and upon the application of powerful pressure by lacing, bandaging, or other means, they appeared to be greatly relieved, and some came out of the trance state. On the next day, however, they again commenced dancing, and exhibited similar symptoms. During this trance condition, they professed to receive communications from Heaven, and presently added prophesying to their dancing. The contagion spread by sympathy, and soon almost every city in Germany and the Netherlands had its corps of Corybantic dancers. Medicine seemed powerless in treating a disease so novel; and the baffled physicians turned their patients over to the priests, who tried in vain their most potent formula of exorcism upon them: the demon would not come out, and priestly authority seemed sadly waning, when the secular authorities, disgusted with the gross licentiousness which had followed in the train of the epidemic, took the matter in hand, and banished, without pity or exception, every one who was attacked with the disease. This prompt treatment, aided, no doubt, by the reaction which followed the intense excitement, was effectual in subduing it for a time; but a few years later, it again appeared at Strasburg, and for more than two hundred years, its occasional out-bursts caused no little anxiety among the authorities of the cities of Europe.
In its subsequent appearances, the priests returned to the attack, and having experienced the inefficiency of exorcisms, they improvised a saint, Veit or Vitus, who, though he had died a thousand years before, and had had no connection with dancing manias, unless, perchance, he were a Circumcellimist, which they would hardly have pretended, yet possessed, so said the legend, the power of curing all those who, by liberal donations to the priests, secured their intercession with him. The prayers were to be accompanied with a prescribed formula of food, and procession around his shrine. This, or the effect on the imagination, restored some to health, and St. Vitus grew so greatly in reputation, that, to this day, his name is connected with a spasmodic affection bearing some resemblance to the original dance of St. John, but without its hallucination.
The north of Scotland, the Hebrides, and the Orkneys have, from the earliest times, been famous for these mantic convulsions, as the German writers term them. Not to speak of the Sagheirm, or torture and sacrifice of black cats, with its fearful accompaniments, and the power of prophecy and second sight supposed to be thus attained, under the terrible influence of which the sacrifice often experienced the most violent convulsions, there has been for ages a convulsive affection, endemic in that region, often accompanied by hallucination, known as the leaping ague, under the influence of which, those affected would leap in the air, seize upon the rafters of the building, and pass from one to another with the agility of a monkey; at other times, they would whirl on one foot with the most inconceivable velocity for a long time, often barking, howling, or uttering other animal sounds.
On the Continent, the last appearance of the Dance of St. John was among the pupils of the orphan-schools of Amsterdam, in 1566, and of Hun in 1670. The symptoms exhibited by these children seem to have indicated the prevalent ideas of a new phase of the disorder, namely, witchcraft. They were cast violently upon the floor or ground; they stamped with their feet, struck their arms and heads on the earth, gnashed their teeth, howled and yelled like dogs. Occasionally they fell into a cataleptic state, and remained thus for hours. These paroxysms occurred most commonly during the hours of worship, or the appointed seasons of prayer. Other children on seeing their convulsions, or listening to their bowlings, were affected in a similar way. On being removed from the school, and placed in the families of citizens of the better class, these convulsions gradually disappeared, and the children recovered their health. The spasmodic influence now seemed for a time to be confined to nunneries; and the most abstemious and apparently devout of the sisters declared themselves, or were pronounced by others, under diabolic influence, and under this hallucination often performed the most extraordinary and surprising feats. Sorely were the good fathers troubled at this sudden irruption of the devil into their holiest places. Every form of exorcism which their imaginations could dictate was tried, but in vain. Occasionally a poor nun was burned; but thereat the devil grew more audacious; and for every victim sacrificed at the stake, there were at least ten new cases of possession. The monks had no peace: when with droning, sing-song tone they attempted to say their masses, their arch-enemy instigated some fair nun to raise such a clatter, that their voices could not be heard; and the more solemn the duty they were to perform, the more obstreperous were his manifestations. Holy water was of no avail: fifteen centuries of practice had enabled him to get over his dislike for that. In vain were the nuns commanded to say the LORD’s Prayer, or the Ten Commandments: they apparently complied, but in an indistinct voice; and when the fathers listened attentively, they found to their horror that they were saying them backward. In their dire despair, they at last applied to the Pope, Innocent VIII., who in 1484 issued his sorcery bull, in which he appoints three inquisitors, to define witchcraft, and lay down rules for its recognition and punishment; and also, by themselves, or their deputies, to decide upon cases of supposed witchcraft. By this bull, the jurisdiction over witchcraft was taken from the secular, and given to the ecclesiastical power—a change which cost thousands of lives.
The appointed inquisitors devoted themselves to their work, and in 1489 brought out the famous Malleus Malficarum, or Witchhammer, a work which was long the text-book and authority of the Catholic Church on the subject of witchcraft. The publication of this work was the signal for the commencement of a season of infatuation, which lasted for two centuries. There had previously been not a few executions for witchcraft; but while the matter was in the hands of the secular power, there were many eminent jurists who would not condemn a person to death on this charge. But when the trials were transferred to the ecclesiastical courts, the clergy, already excited by the prevalence of what they regarded as heresy, and firmly believing in the active and malignant participation of Satan in human affairs, were ready to credit any testimony, however absurd, which indicated Satanic agency. The victims of this fearful delusion were sacrificed by thousands; and such is the perverse passion of human nature for notoriety, that for every victim who perished, there were scores of others who, under the influence of insanity or terror, confessed themselves witches, or being accused by others, acknowledged it, and on the rack, or from fear of it, gave most horrible details of witch-journeys, witch-feasts, witch-Sabbaths, and witch-sacraments, whose only existence was in their own distempered imaginations.
No person, however pure his life, however great his wealth, however exalted his station, was safe; at some moment when he might fancy himself most secure, a child, a half-crazed woman, a malicious imbecile even, might mention his name as guilty of this terrible crime, and anon, without counsel, with no opportunity of confronting his accusers, he was imprisoned, subjected to torture, promised pardon if he confessed; and if deluded by this false hope, he acknowledged deeds physically and morally impossible, he was burned, in order to save his soul from perdition. If, on the other hand, he maintained, even under the terrors of the rack, his innocence, and with heroic spirit refused to perjure his soul, then was he condemned as a hardened and incorrigible offender, his body consigned to the flames, and his soul to the devil, who, it was alleged, had long been his partner in crime. The odium of these persecutions for witchcraft, was not, however confined to the Romish Church. Protestantism had its full share of it. Even Luther, with his vigorous intellect, was a firm believer in witch craft. He himself states that he recommended to the authorities of Wittemberg (we quote from memory) the drowning of an idiot boy, whom he regarded as possessed with a devil, and was quite inclined to resent their refusing to comply with his suggestion. In Sweden, in Great Britain, and in New-England the belief in witchcraft led to the most painful scenes of bloodshed. It gives us a sad picture of human fallibility, when we see such men as Sir Matthew Hale, one of the great lights of English jurisprudence, the devout and learned Increase Mather, and his not less accomplished son, Cotton Mather, laying aside all the humanity of their nature, and urging the judicial murder of persons of the most blameless lives, on the accusation of mere children, whose bewitchment would have yielded to a wholesome administration of the rod, to gentle medication, or at the most to the soothing influence of music.
The vigorous intellects, the strong common-sense, and the unflinching courage of the men who, in the midst of this delusion, at the peril of their own lives, denounced the madness of judges and clergy, entitle them to our respect and admiration. Wier, De Rio, Becker, and Thomasius, the most prominent of them, are names which will be long remembered as those of friends of humanity.
Running parallel with the witchcraft excitement, and partaking of many of its characteristics, there were other delusions, which though sometimes falling under the ban of a Pope, inquisitor, or Protestant bishop, yet were not visited with the same tragic and cruel punishment which was allotted to the supposed witch. Some of these were the legitimate out-growths of the old Scandinavian and Greek mythologies, which had burrowed in the minds of the masses for ages, and now in the general agitation of society, came to the surface. Such was vampirism, the belief in which was so general in the eastern countries of Europe, which attributed to many of the dead the power of coming from their graves at night, and restoring their own bodies to vigor and vitality, by sucking the blood of the young. This horrible belief pervaded the greater part of Austria, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Venice; and many a grave was desecrated, and many a stiffened corpse had a stake driven through its heart, under the influence of the delusion. Another class of these delusions was the result of religious excitement, at a period when the human intellect was waking from the slumber of ages. Such was the origin of the Convulsionnaires, who in the sixteenth century spread from the slopes of the Cevennes all over France and Germany; and by their leaping, crowing, shouting, barking, rolling on the earth, and sustaining a pressure which would have crushed them under ordinary circumstances, attracted much attention throughout Central Europe.
In a curious tract by Dr. Hughson, LL.D., published in 1814, we find an extended account of a convulsionary epidemic, quite local in its character, which raged in London in 1707, and the following year, the leaders of which are said to have been Frenchmen. It was characterized by dancing, howling, prophesying, etc. The Great Awakening, as it has justly been called, which followed the labors of Whitefield, the Wesleys, the Tennents, and other Reformers, about the middle of the last century, producing as it did intense excitement, and a marked change from the formality prevalent at its inception, was, in some of the newer settlements in this country, and even in some of the rural villages of New-England, accompanied by convulsive movements and hallucination. In some places, the number of these Jumpers and Springers, as they were called, was very considerable, and their movements strongly resembled those of the Convulsionnaires of Paris, and the Dancers of Aix-la-Chapelle.
A still more marked epidemic of this description, was that which occurred in Kentucky and Tennessee, about the commencement of the present century. This, like the preceding, originated in a religious revival, though promoted unquestionably by previous privation and intense excitement. We give a brief description of it, from the pen of an eye-witness: ‘It commenced with a powerful religions revival, during which meetings were held for a long time in the open air; and the frontier population, whom constant exposure to Indian forays, and the hardships of pioneer life had rendered peculiarly susceptible to excitement, had, by the most thrilling appeals to their imaginations, been lashed to frenzy. With each day, the excitement reached a higher pitch of intensity. At last, they began to bark like dogs and howl like wolves, and neither their own wills nor the efforts of others could restrain this extraordinary action. The scene was often terrific yet painful. In a single room, I have seen some dancing, others whirling with the utmost velocity, some barking, howling, mewing, or roaring, others declaiming at the top of their voices, proclaiming themselves in spired, or denouncing the terrible judgments of GOD on all who did not believe these wonderful scenes to be direct displays of His power; and ever and anon, one or another of those who had been sitting quietly, smitten with the contagion, rising and joining in the uproar; while the poor ministers stood aghast at the fearful whirlwind of passion and insanity, which was apparently the result of their labors, but which their skill was insufficient to allay.’ The duration of this epidemic was much shorter than that of most of those in Europe. In a little more than a twelve-month, it had almost entirely disappeared, and it seems never to have degenerated into those licentious and disgraceful practices which had marked previous epidemics. Indeed, in many instances, this very frenzy was, with the rough pioneer, the beginning of a better life. It was to the scenes enacted at this time, we believe, that the epithet ‘Jerks’ was first applied.
Some sixteen years since, an epidemic somewhat similar to this, made its appearance in Sweden and Lapland. The provinces of Kalmar, Wexio, and Jön Koppin, in Southern Sweden, comprise some of the poorest land in the kingdom, and requires even in the most favorable season, severe toil, to yield to the poverty-stricken inhabitants the necessaries of life. Yet they are apparently contented, and in intelligence and deep religious feeling, surpass most of the other inhabitants of the kingdom. It was here that the convulsive affection popularly known as the Preaching Epidemic commenced. Its first symptoms were heaviness in the head, heat at the pit of the stomach, pricking sensation in the extremities, convulsions and quakings, and then followed in many, though not in all cases, a condition of trance, in which the body was insensible to outward impressions, the loudest noise not disturbing them, and needles and pins producing no sensation when thrust into the body. In this trance condition, the mind seemed unusually active; many of those affected, would preach with great power and eloquence, using language such as they could not command in their ordinary conditions; others would converse with great clearness and force, and some, it is said, would speak in languages of which they had no knowledge in the normal state. The preaching, though occasionally incoherent, was generally correct in doctrinal sentiment; and when hortatory, was addressed to the reformation of the lives of the hearers, abstinence from the use of intoxicating drinks, showy and costly clothing, and the necessity of purity of life, and preparation for the future world.
According to Dr. Souden, it originated with a girl of sixteen who had for some time manifested the symptoms of chorea, which finally developed itself as a religious mania, and was propagated by the contagion of sympathy to other girls at first, subsequently to older women, and finally to men of nervous temperament. It eventually reached the Lapps, and among that singular people, in whom the nervous element has always predominated, and who are deeply tinged with the old Scandinavian superstitions, it spread like fire on the prairies. The scenes of the American epidemic were reenacted, and the wildest rant, and the most incoherent expressions, were received as direct revelations from God. Clergymen and physicians who attempted to check the extravagance of these demonstrations, were often treated with great severity and violence. It is creditable to the Lapps and Swedes, that amid all this excitement, no serious error or immoral doctrine found a footing, and that after the subsidence of the epidemic, the lives and characters of those affected by it, were rather benefited than injured.
In 1822, a young Scotch minister, named Edward Irving, came to London, and was chosen minister of the Caledonian Chapel in that city. He brought with him a high reputation for eloquence, quaintness, and eccentricity, which his sermons and publications soon increased. For some years, his chapel was greatly thronged by men of all ranks. The ardor of his imagination, and the naturally eccentric turn of his mind, led him to imbibe readily the mysticism of Coleridge, and eventually to plunge into the wildest absurdities. He publicly announced his belief in spiritual utterances, and the power of speaking with tongues, and speedily a jargon worse than that of Babel was heard at his services. These spiritual utterances were accompanied by convulsions, trance, contortions of feature, and other evidences, as he alleged, of the ‘power’ of GOD. Worn out with the fearful excitement which ensued, and his sensitive temperament goaded by the obloquy which his course had aroused, Mr. Irving’s fine constitution gave way, and he died in 1833, at the early age of forty-one. Since his death, his followers have avoided any public manifestation of the ‘utterances,’ though it is alleged that they still hold to the doctrine.
The early exercises of the Mormons and of the Millerites were characterized to some extent by similar excitements. In the case of the former, they have degenerated into a system which palliates or justifies every crime by a professed revelation from God: in the latter, they have long since ceased; and the ‘Advent congregations,’ as they are called, are inferior to no others in propriety or decorum.
The so-called spiritual excitement has developed many of the same symptoms within a few years past, and though in most cases it was the tables rather than the people which danced and whirled, yet there have also been instances where the ‘spirits ‘have caused the mediums to play most fantastic tricks.
Should any ask, What is the power which has, for three thousand years, thus singularly influenced human action, we must frankly confess our ignorance. We shall make no attempt to conceal ‘it, by talking learnedly of mesmerism, animal-magnetism, the odylic force, or the visitation of the souls of the departed. It is the office of the observer to collate and carefully arrange facts; the theorist must make such use of them as he pleases.
If, however, our readers have carefully followed our narrative, they will find, we think, the following facts established: The ‘Jerks’ have always supervened upon seasons of great excitement, and most frequently upon famine, pestilence, or severe bodily privation: thus, the Bacchantic fury was said to have followed a famine; the Dance of St. John, the Black Death; witchcraft in Europe, the misery and ruin of the Crusades, and the war, famine, and pestilence that followed in their train; in America, the privations and hard ships of King Philip’s war; the Jerks of 1802, the excitement of long and deadly Indian warfare, and the miseries of pioneer life; the Preaching Epidemic of Sweden, the famine resulting from an insufficient crop, when a full one hardly supplied the households of the peasants with the coarse black-bread of the country.
These epidemics have subsided most quickly when let alone, and neither encouraged or opposed. Violent opposition and persecution have uniformly increased the severity of the symptoms, and the number of the sufferers.
The constancy of these features in the various convulsive epidemics of so many centuries, betokens a common origin for them all; and they may serve as data, from which he who shall hereafter be gifted to penetrate the adyta of that temple may draw some conclusions concerning the powers of the wondrous spirit that in habits it; and thus lift the mysterious veil, which, like that of Isis, no man has hitherto raised.
Source
“Jerks: Ancient and Modern,” Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine 52 (1858): 373–383.
