Free Republic

The term ‘hysteria’ derives from the Greek word ‘hystera’ meaning ‘uterus,’ and is generally attributed to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. In the 15th century, another outbreak of mass hysteria occurred in Germany when a nun in a convent started biting the other sisters. Before long, the behavior spread throughout the convent and, as news spread further afield, so too did the phenomenon, resulting in biting outbreaks in convents across Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. After a few examples of nuns being punished, the behavior quickly subsided. In the 1844 book ‘Epidemics of the Middle Ages’...an account is given of...

n 1636, according to an 1841 account by Scottish author Charles MacKay, the entirety of Dutch society went crazy over exotic tulips. As Mackay wrote in his wildly popular, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, as prices rose, people got swept up in a speculative fever, spending a year’s salary on rare bulbs in hopes of reselling them for a profit. Mackay dubbed the phenomenon “The Tulipomania.”