Newspapers in the eastern states tracked the preaching exploits of the popular, but controversial Methodist itinerant Lorenzo Dow. Most of these reports were decidedly unfavorable. This example from Hudson, New York, relates a rumor that the touring evangelist’s camp meetings near Lexington, Kentucky, had “originated a disorder called the Jerks.” Click here for corresponding excerpts from Dow’s History of Cosmopolite.
For virtue’s self may too much zeal be had;
The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.
We perceive more complaints of the effects of the camp-meetings instituted by Lorenzo Dow, and continued by less fanatical and more sober and consistent preachers. It is asserted in some prints, that these assemblies have originated a disorder called the Jerks, being a convulsive and involuntary twitching and jerking of different parts of the body, taken at these meetings, and continued in other places, and communicated (supposed by sympathy and horror) to strangers. How prone are mankind to run into excess, and verge from one extreme to another.
Source
The Bee [Hudson, N.Y.], November 6, 1804, [3].
