In 1962, in a boarding school for girls in a small town in
Tanganyika (now Tanzania), a group of young students broke out in peels of
laughter. It’s not unusual for young
girls can get the giggles. We all know
that. But this was different. An epic case of the giggles.
What actually happened has been mythicized, and looking back
on it, many researchers think exaggerated.
Here is the most common description of what happened.
A bit of background.
In 1961, Tanganyika gained its freedom from its British colonial
government. Within a few months,
suddenly everything was changing—what was expected of children in school, the
practice of traditional religions, the laws that governed the country. The general state of flux flummoxed most
people, especially the least educated and most downtrodden of the citizens.
The schoolgirls in question were to take a math test one day
in early 1962. Suddenly, as the exam was
about to begin, one of the students broke out in uncontrollable laughter. Laughing, as we all have experienced, can be
quite contagious. Soon a score of girls
were in hysterics. Literally, it turns
out. What happened next is not precisely
documented but has been widely reported as follows.
The laugher spread to other classrooms. It became impossible to stop it. Eventually, the hilarity caused chaos, and the
school had to be closed. Parents came to
take their children home, spreading the epidemic to several villages. Thousands of people were affected.
At first, doctors thought it might have been some sort of
weird virus or strange form of malaria.
No dice. Nothing microbial was
detected. Depending on whom you consult,
the outbreak lasted somewhere between six and eighteen months. People
did not laugh continuously. That would
have been physically impossible. But evidently,
after pauses, the sufferers relapsed, and the rolling laughter continued.
So what. Laughter is
good thing. No?
Well, no!
This kind of laughter has nothing to do with glee. It comes to people, not from merriment, but
from anxiety and brings along with it pain, fainting, inability to breathe,
tears, and rashes. The underlying cause
is mass hysteria. The official diagnosis
is Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI).
Stress sets it off—usually in a workplace or a school.
And it is not localized to Africa. Something similar happened in Lafayette,
Indiana in the twenty-first century. They didn’t want to admit that it was
psychological, so they blamed it on bug bites and sprayed insecticide.
A well-known outbreak of MPI
took place in the West Bank in 1983.
The symptoms there were fainting and dizziness. 943 people were hospitalized, most of them
Palestinian schoolgirls, but also a number of female Israeli soldiers. The
government blamed it on propaganda
MPI almost always affects people who are poor and
powerless. Looking back at history, researchers
have identified a few strange outbreaks of “disease” as MPI, most notably, the
Dancing Plague of 1518 in Strasbourg. During
the month that it lasted, around 400 people danced for days on end. Some died of heart attacks, stroke, or just
plain exhaustion. Other outbreaks of
choreomania (also called St. Vitus Dance) occurred in Germany, the Netherlands,
England, France, Italy, and Switzerland between 1374 and into the 17th
century. But the largest by far was the
one in 1518 in Strasbourg.
Mass hysteria. When
life becomes intolerable.
Given the stressful times we are now going through, I wonder
how MPI will next manifest itself. I
imagine it will. Unless the antidote is
Eurovision.
Annamaria - Monday
Posts
An episode occurred in an elite Virginia college when I was a freshmen: it sounds like a form of MPI. The freshman marched on the sophomore building and trashed it - all the while laughing and shouting - this was never recorded in the hostory of the college - but it was a wild example of mass hysteria. These were girls from fine families and all of high I.Q. T. J. Straw, who was in the crowd, swept along with the mass emotion - now ashamed to have been a poart of it.
ReplyDeleteThelma, your description fits the profile for MPI--a group of people all under the same stress with no way of comforting themselves except in hysterical action. Of course you did it too. You were--like all the new students--filled with fear of the unknown. Absolve yourself. And maybe watch some Eurovision. It will make you laugh for good reason.
DeleteYou have the most interesting posts, Annamaria.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Allan. What a lovely thing to say. In all sincerity, I am inspired to keep up the tone set on MIE from its founding, by all our bloggers past and present.
DeleteOne of the most intense weeks I've experienced was primed for MPI, though I can't say it went that far.
ReplyDeleteI was in my first year of college at Oregon State U when, on Feb 8, 1972, Nancy Diane Wyckoff was murdered in her dorm room just across the street from the dorm I lived in, stabbed in the heart by a large knife. The knife wasn't found until much later. The week before two other women had been attacked on campus (probably rape attempts). In the following week, in the depths of winter, short days, long dark nights, in the highly concentrated population of young people on campus, rumors ran wild and fear bloomed like mold on meat left in a warm dark space. One day a disturbed student lightly cut his neck with a razor blade, then ran into our dorm's office, wildly claiming that someone had tried to choke him with piano wire. Another day, a guy started to walk into a women's bathroom in the colliseum, the women inside screamed and he ran away, and within the hour the story bounced back and forth across campus, turning into another attack. Several other women on other nights felt (or WERE) attacked in the dark of evening, and again rumors ran wild. A program was instituted where women in the "girl's dorms" could request an escort, and men from the "boy's dorms", who'd signed up, would go to their dorm and escort them to the library or a classroom. It was dark from 4:30pm until 7:30am, and the nights seemed to last forever and be filled with fear at every turn. At least once or twice a day a new rumor would run wild across campus, burning through the student body, of a new attack, a new menace. The police interviewed EVERYONE in all of the dorms on campus. I had a singular interview, as my roommate that term was a ...er... unique... individual, very much "out of the norm," and he'd been mentioned to the police by a number of folks as being VERY strange. He was asked to go to the colliseum security office for a lie detector test, and he was PISSED... not for having to take the test, but because it was during the daily 4:00 Wild Wild West rerun that he watched religiously.
It was an intense, bizarre, fascinating, strange, scary week. Eventually the hysteria died down, and about 6 weeks later, a young man was arrested for the murder: he was a spurned boyfriend who'd shown up at her door in the middle of the night and, when she answered the door, he stabbed her through the heart.
But I'll never forget the experience of that "week of terror and rumor", seeing first-hand what can happen when 15,000 young people are crammed into a 1/4-square-mile area and murder happens...
YIKES!! Wow, EvKa. How awful that must have been for all concerned. And again, all the hallmarks of MPI--a group of people in a confined place, powerless to deal with a situation. In your case, something truly terrifying had happened. NOT to make light of it, but it would make a setting for a horror novel. Horrific as it must have been.
DeleteYes, it WAS a truly horrifying week, but prime material for a novel. It was almost like being on a cruise ship with a madman running around attacking people (or so it seemed at the time). Of course, most of it was entirely in the minds of the people in that tightly packed area, although there were apparently a few non-murderous attacks that contributed to the confusion and fear. I've often thought of that week, both in terms of what happened and what it taught me about human psychology. Reading Stephen King years later definitely sounded echoes in my mind of that week.
DeleteFunny you should mention Stephen King in relation to your experience. I thought of him and Hitchcock as the only people I know of who could do you story justice in print or film.
DeleteFascinating. I knew giggling and laughter were contagious, and could go on for a protracted time, but I'd never heard of anything like this!
ReplyDeleteThis is why I love this blog. I always learn something interesting here.
Very interesting! It makes me wonder if there is a tie-in to the entertainment world's belief that the most insecure folk in the industry are comedians! I also wonder whether early exposure to MPI can explain curmudgeonry in later life...not meaning to be pointing any fingers, EvKa.
ReplyDeleteThat's okay, Jeff, sometimes the things we do, without meaning to, reveal a great deal more about our character than the things we mean to do. Not that I'm calling you mean. Or a character.
DeleteWell... maybe a character. :)
Delete