“[John Patton] told me that he had often seen five hundred men start off at a run through the woods—day as well as night—like so many red deer. Yet nobody ever got hurt. Then, men stood and jerked themselves most violently, holding to saplings trimmed up for this use….”
“The bodily exercise has assumed such a variety of shapes as to render it a truly herculian task to give an intelligent statement of it to any person who has never seen it. However, I do not hesitate to say, that it is evidently the Lord’s work, though marvellous in our eyes….”
“The religious people now have the Jirks which operates like Hickups….”
“A strange and unknown Nervous Affection, or Disease, made its appearance, in a variety of forms, in different parts of the Counties of Knox and Blount…. [It] was termed; ‘the Jerks.'”
![Newspaper Article from the [Richmond] Virginia Argus (October 24, 1804)](https://blog.richmond.edu/jerkshistory/files/2018/02/VirginiaArgus1804-1080.jpg)
“There is one species of these ‘religious exercises’ which are certainly involuntary, and they have spread from the camp and other religious meetings, in an alarming manner. These are called ‘the jerks.'”
