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RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN MENTAL DISEASE
ravages of the Black Death. It began in Germany, spreading
from there north-westwards. It was known as the St. Vitus
Dance.
The condition manifested itself in convulsive shiverings, wild
dancing and orgies of superstition and sexual licence. People
who were seized by this strange visitation congregated in the
streets and churches shouting wildly and frothing at the mouth.
They formed themselves into rings, linking hands and whirling
round in wild frenzies of excitement until they collapsed from
exhaustion. As they danced they saw visions and mouthed
halfincoherent utterances thought to be prophetic. Farmers left the
plough, tradesmen their shops and wives their homes and
children to join the dances; while thieves and beggars seized the
opportunity to loot everything theycouldlayhandson. Hundreds
of women, married and single, lost all sense of shame, indulging
publicly in the grossest sexual licentiousness. Neither the
reproaches of the priests nor the remedies of the physicians were
effective to quell the outbreak. It begun to subside after a few
months and gradually disappeared.
Although no religious epidemic comparable with this one in
violence or extent has occurred in recent years, there is ample
evidence that phenomena of the same kind, if milder in form, have
accompanied all religious revivals and mass movements; and
both in Europe and America many forms of corporate religious
insanity have appeared in recent years. Their strangest feature
is their contagiousness. The curious onlooker is caught up in the
frenzy of the early converts and for no apparent reason feels
their fervour and demonic excitement, losing altogether his
self-possession and becoming, very often, criminally dangerous
to the rest of the community.
The religious epidemic, even in its milder contemporary
forms, must be included among the unsound religious influences
that can precipitate an outbreak of insanity in the individual.
Its influence is closely akin to that of other environmental
situations which produce emotional shocks and tensions. They
are the straws that break the camel’s back when personalities
already precariously balanced are subjected to them, even
indirectly.
A predisposition to mental disease that hitherto has been
lateat is activated by such situations; nevertheless it does not
M 177
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