Excerpt from the Life of William Capers (ca. 1803)

1802-1804, American Antiquarian Society, Autobiographies & Biographies, Dancing Exercise, Falling Exercise, Methodists, Running Exercise

“[P]ersons who were not before known to be at all religious…would suddenly fall to the ground, and become strangely convulsed with what was called the jerks; the head and neck, and sometimes the body also, moving backwards and forwards with spasmodic violence, and so rapidly that the plaited hair of a woman’s head might be heard to crack….”