Account of the epidemic religious monomania in Sweden in the years 1841 and 1842 / by the editor.

  • Smith, Samuel Hanbury, 1810-1894.
Date:
[1850]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Account of the epidemic religious monomania in Sweden in the years 1841 and 1842 / by the editor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    while there is too much reason to fear that the duties of the regular ministry, in spreading a knowledge of true religion, and in the religious care of their flocks in general, had been sadly neglected. From similar causes, similar consequences have followed on several prior occasions, although the disease never took on so serious an epidemic form. Fifty years before a number of persons had been sent to the insane asylum at Danvik, afflicted with the preaching madness, of whom only one recovered, the others remained incurably insane. They were sent to the asylum in order to stop the spread of the disease ; a measure that proved perfectly successful. Since then, different parts of the country have at times been troubled with partial outbreaks of religious fanaticism, which if they did not merge into mania, were very near it, having lead to naked dances, public baptism in rivers, unbridled intercourse between the sexes, &c. Not without interest, are some of the remarks of Deacon Ponten, who has been in the habit of treat- ing insane, in his own house, for upwards of 40 years, and lives just in the very neighborhood of the place where the epi- demic broke out. He says : 1 think I have observed, that of late, insanity has more commonly been caused by the influ- ence of the mind, whereas 20 or 30 years since, the contrary was the rule. The number of those affected with insanity, is decidedly on the increase of late years, which he attributes to the influence of fanatical preaching, and the physical dis- eases caused by the abuse of alcoholic drinks. He observes, that if an evil-minded person be roused to repentance by a ranting priest, he is very apt to become a prey to a lasting melancholy and anxiety, and to be seized with what the doc- tor aptly calls panophobia. An ignorantpeople, a prey to the malign influence of the pre- disposing mental and physical causes of such disease, would not require much additional impulse, to be driven on to abso- lnte insanity; and this impulse was given, when a young girl, rendered extremely excitable and susceptible, by the effect of a tedious chronic nervous affection, after much reading of the bible and of other religious books, fell into a state of catalep- tic ecstacy. The disease spread like a prairie fire, among the excited people, numbers fell into the same condition, many suffered in different degrees, and almost every one felt the in- fluence of the epidemic, even if not drawn into its vortex. It is rare indeed, as it appears to us, that the causes of a psychi- cal disease, have been so clearly displayed. If by the continued study of religious works, giving free play to the imagination, and abandoning the guidance of the onderstanding, a person becomes deranged—or if the same lot