mport in the Charite Hospital in Berlin.
A girl fell into strong convulsions. The disease proved contagious,
several others becoming afflicted in a similar way; but nearly all were
finally cured, principally by the administration of opium, which appears
at that time to have been a fashionable remedy.

Of the same sort was a case at Lyons in 1851. Sixty women were working
together in a shop, when one of them, after a bitter quarrel with
her husband, fell into a violent nervous paroxysm. The other women,
sympathizing with her, gathered about to assist her, but one after
another fell into a similar condition, until twenty were thus
prostrated, and a more general spread of the epidemic was only prevented
by clearing the premises.(404)

(404) For these examples and others, see Tuke, Influence of the Mind
upon the Body, vol. i, pp. 100, 277; also Hecker's essay.

But while these cases seemed, in the eye of Science, fatal to the old
conception of diabolic influence, the great majority of such epidemics,
when unexplained, continued to give strength to the older view.

In Roman Catholic countries these manifestations, as we have seen, have
generally appeared in convents, or in churches where young girls are
brought together for their first communion, or at shrines where miracles
are supposed to be wrought.

In Protestant countries they appear in times of great religious
excitement, and especially when large bodies of young women are
submitted to the influence of noisy and frothy preachers. Well-known
examples of this in America are seen in the "Jumpers," "Jerkers," and
various revival extravagances, especially among the negroes and "poor
whites" of the Southern States.

The proper conditions being given for the development of the
disease--generally a congregation composed mainly of young women--any
fanatic or overzealous priest or preacher may stimulate hysterical
seizures, which are very likely to become epidemic.

As a recent typical example on a large scale, I take the case of
diabolic possession at Morzine, a French village on the borders of
Switzerland; and it is especially instructive, because it was thoroughly
investigated by a competent man of science.

About the year 1853 a sick girl at Morzine, acting strangely, was
thought to be possessed of the devil, and was taken to Besancon,
where she seems to have fallen into the hands of kindly and sensible
ecclesiastics, and, under the operation of the relics