1802-1804, American Antiquarian Society, Autobiographies & Biographies, Methodists, Other Bodily Exercises & General References
“In this year [1804] that strange disorder ‘the jerks’ overran all Western Tennessee. It attacked the righteous and the wicked—an involuntary muscular exercise, which drew the subjects affected backward and forward with a force and quickness perhaps previously unknown to the human family….”
1805-1809, American Antiquarian Society, Autobiographies & Biographies, Barking Exercise, Dancing Exercise, Falling Exercise, Laughing Exercise, Methodists
“These strange exercises that have excited so much wonder in the western country came in toward the last of the revival, and were, in the estimation of some of the more pious, the chaff of the work. Now it was that the humiliating and often disgusting exercises of dancing, laughing, jerking, barking like dogs, or howling like wolves, and rolling on the ground, manifested themselves….”
