![Excerpt from the Life of William Capers (ca. 1803)](https://blog.richmond.edu/jerkshistory/files/2018/11/Capers1858-1080.jpg)
Excerpt from the Life of William Capers (ca. 1803)
“[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….”