David Wendel Yandell

“ It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the intensity and duration of this nervous disorder, no instance is recorded in which permanent insanity resulted from it. Such results were to have been expected; insanity is mentioned by Edwards as having attended the excitement in New England, and it may be that reason was dethroned in some whose cases have not become matters of history. In a few years, after a sounder public opinion began to assert itself, instances of the disorder had become rare, but it was many years before the epidemic entirely ceased. ”

“ The preaching was fervid and impassioned in the extreme. Many of the preachers, unable to control their emotions during the sermon, went around in "a singing ecstasy," shouting and shaking hands with others, as much excited as themselves. In this way everything was done to "heap fuel on the fire," and it was at such meetings that thousands fell in convulsions to the ground.
Some of the actors in these strange scenes have left records of the state of their minds, which show that they were in a condition bordering on insanity, if not actually insane. ”

“ Another feature of these excited meetings, which served still further to intensify the feelings of the people who attended them for days and nights together, was the part taken in them by children. Nothing was more affecting to the congregations than the sight of a little boy or girl on a log or stump, passionately exhorting the multitude. Thus, a boy, who appeared to be about twelve years of age, is described as having retired from the stand at Indian Creek, Ohio, during the sermon, and, mounting a log and raising his voice to a high pitch, soon had nearly all the congregation with him. ”

“ The subjects often rolled over and over on the ground, or ran violently until worn out with the exertion. Hysterical laughter was another modification. Instances of laughter were only occasional at first, but it grew, until in 1803 the "holy laugh" was introduced systematically as a part of religious worship. Sometimes half the congregation, apparently in the most devout spirit, were to be heard laughing aloud in the midst of a lively sermon. As the excitement grew, the infatuated subjects took to dancing, and at last to barking like dogs. ”

“ The convulsions once started in a congregation spread quickly through it, until all the fit subjects were convulsed. Repetition greatly increased the proneness to the disorder, which was invited by the masses on the supposition that it was a true religious exercise.
These perverted muscular movements all come under the head of morbid reflex action. By the continued religious fervor, the central portions of the brain, the immediate seat of emotion and feeling, became inordinately excited. ”

“ He must necessarily go as he was stimulated, whether with a violent dash on the ground, and bounce from place to place like a foot-ball, or hop round with head, limbs, and trunk twitching and jolting in every direction, as if they must inevitably fly asunder. ”

“ In his "History of the Kentucky Revival" he says: "Nothing in nature could better represent this strange and unaccountable operation than for one to goad another, alternately on every side, with a piece of red hot iron. The exercise commonly began in the head, which would fly backward and forward, and from side to side with a quick jolt, which the person would naturally labor to suppress, but in vain; and the more any one labored to stay himself, and be sober, the more he staggered, and the more his twitches increased. ”

“ By this strange operation the human frame was commonly so transformed and disfigured as to lose every trace of its natural appearance. Sometimes the head would be twitched right and left to a half-round with such velocity that not a feature could be discovered, but the face appeared as much behind as before. ”

“ The same writer gives the history of a case of jerks as follows, and no case could illustrate more strikingly the nature of the affection:
A young man, of a pious family, the son of a tanner, feigned sickness one Sunday morning to avoid going that day to camp-meeting. He kept his bed until he was assured that all the family, except a few negro children, had left the premises, and was much pleased at the success of his stratagem. As he lay quietly in his bed, his thoughts naturally turned to the camp-meeting in progress. ”

“ It soon grew into a habit, and those who had once fallen were ready to fall again under circumstances by no means exciting. Women who had suffered repeated attacks sometimes fell from their horses on their way to or from the meeting-house, while relating their past religious exercises. ”

“ Possessed by one dominant idea, the people gave themselves up to the wildest enthusiasm, and it was no uncommon thing for them to spend the whole night in religious orgies such as have been described. ”

“ A large proportion of the members of every congregation had power to resist the convulsive tendency. In a great majority, no such tendency probably existed; but where there was a conscious impulse toward the convulsions it could be restrained by most persons before it had been yielded to too long. ”

“ Others who fell hard to the ground, or in running encountered stumps or trees, felt no pain from the violence. So many fell at Cabin Creek camp-meeting, it is related, that to prevent their being trodden upon "they were laid out in order on two squares of the meeting-house, covering the floor like so many corpses. ”

“ The principle of imitation accounts for the rest. The great nervous centers, in multitudes of people, being in a state of polarity, any unusual exhibition of feeling would throw the more excitable into spasms; and the affection would then spread by sympathy, as hysterical convulsions and chorea are known to spread among girls at boarding-schools. ”

“ Nor were the people who suffered so mortifying a transformation always of the vulgar classes; persons of the highest rank in society, on the contrary, men and women of cultivated minds and polite manners, found themselves, by sympathy, reduced to this degrading situation. ”

“ In his journal he records numerous instances of men and women dropping to the ground under his preaching "as if struck by lightning," ten or a dozen praying at once. They had also prevailed extensively in New Zealand half a century before they became epidemic in Kentucky. The elder Edwards has left an instructive account of the bodily agitations which accompanied the revivals of religion from 1735-'42. Many instances are given of fainting, falling, trance, numbness, outcries, and convulsions, and he relates that some of the subjects lost their reason. ”

“ All classes, saints and sinners, the strong as well as the weak, were thus affected. I have seen some wicked persons thus affected, and all the time cursing the jerks, while they were thrown to the earth with violence. ”

“ An instance is related where a woman mounted the stand, with an infant in her arms, for the sake of a better prospect, and that being suddenly seized she fell backward, dropping her child. Some one fortunately saw the danger in time to seize and save the child before it fell to the ground. ”