Don't panic! It's just an outbreak

— -- Fads come and go, but genuine mass scares and delusions provide a kind of long-lasting entertainment. Consider the "Swiss Preaching Epidemic" of 1841, marked by nationwide hallucinatory sermonizing by ordinary men, women and children. Or the tale of "Rhode Island Martian Panic" of 1974, in which a recreation of the 1938 War of the Worlds radio script terrified the tiny state.

In our era of a real estate bust and financial meltdown, learning about wacky, as opposed to costly, varieties of folly may offer some solace. And maybe some lessons too.

"If we are to understand the present, the lessons of the past can save us from tragic mistakes," say historian Hilary Evans of the Mary Evan Picture Library in London, and sociologist Robert Bartholomew, in their recently-released Outbreak!, The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary SocialBehavior. The encyclopedia collects hundreds of panics, manias and scares from the "Abdera Outbreak of Prose and Poetry" of 300 B.C.,where folks in ancient Greece recovering from the flu suddenly started screaming lines from plays ceaselessly, to the "Zoot Suit Riots" in 1940's Southern California, where mobs beat up Mexican-Americans fueled by bogus news reports of gangsterism among young men wearing the shoulder-padded zoot suits.

The classic work on outbursts of unlikely behavior remains Charles Mackay's Memoirs of Extraordinary Delusions, published in 1841, which helped popularize accounts of financial speculations such as the "Tulip Mania" that supposedly swept Holland from 1634 to 1637. Outbreak! brings such accounts up to date, noting how Brown University economist Peter Garber has shown the tulip mania, for example, was "a meaningless winter drinking game" played up by later financial writers, who mistook it for a genuine financial craze.

Instead of mocking each incident, Evans and Bartholomew, describe the social circumstances surrounding each one, which sometimes helps explain episodes such as the Salem Witch Hunts of 1692, while shrugging their shoulders at the worldwide "Hula-Hoop Fad" of 1958. "Social scientists still cannot explain the hula-hoop's sudden intense popularity and subsequent disinterest," they write.

For a little more insight on the encyclopedia, Bartholomew answered some questions by e-mail (historical notes in parentheses are added to his responses):

Q: How overused are terms like "mass hysteria" or "delusion" today?

A: Terms like "mass hysteria" and "mass delusion" are greatly overused and misunderstood, even among many social scientists. New Guinea "cargo cults," (a century-long phenomenon among colonized Pacific islanders who created replicas of flagpoles, ports and airports in the expectation that Western goods would arrive as a result) the Dutch tulip mania, the Martian panic, religious flagellants, the Red Scare — each has been loosely labeled as "mass hysteria" yet have little or nothing do with it. The participants are almost never hysterical in a clinical sense. It is all too common to lump behaviors that to the viewers are unfamiliar or strange, into the catch-all category of "mass hysteria."

Q: Is every fad, for example Twitter, a social delusion?

A: Most fads are not social delusions but are short-term infatuations. Only time will tell whether Twitter is a fad and will go the way of the CB radio after a year or two of intense interest or if it will become a more permanent fixture of our social landscape. Fads typically offer status but quickly fade when "everyone's doing it" and hence loses its novelty.

Q: The encyclopedia notes several cases of scares turning from folklore to pseudoscience, such as the Halley's Comet Scare of 1910 where astronomical prediction of the comet's omen-laden return led to a New York Times prediction that poison gas would bathe the Earth as a result. Is there any larger point to draw from these cases about the role of science in our society today?

A: While adherence to science has led to great advancements for humanity, scientists — those trying to adhere to the principles of science — have all too often allowed prevailing opinion to influence their thinking. Homosexuality, masturbation — even the crossword puzzle fad of the 1920s — have at one time or another been labeled as mental disorders.

Physical and biological scientists seek universal laws, as the same experiment conducted under identical conditions should yield the same result every time. But in the social sciences the outcome is often more social than science as we are dealing with a subject that is far less predictable and more difficult to measure — human behavior. When we throw in the mix normative values in assessing, for example, whether a behavior is normal or abnormal, we are faced with a daunting task if we wish to maintain what we are doing is science.

Q: Can you say a little about why you wrote about these cases of extraordinary social behavior? What's your favorite?

A: We have tried to strike a balance between the many obscure historical episodes, and more recent ones. Not many people would be familiar with the Amou Barking Mania (French villagers start barking and convulsing in 1613), Laughing Epidemics (maniacal laughter among bored-stiff Ugandan schoolschildren inthe 1960's), the Great Cat Massacres (cat bonfires common in Medieval Europe) or the strange case of the Meowing Nuns (a variety of convent hysteria from the 15th to 18th Century). The goal is to expose readers to this rich literature and convey the importance of understanding these behaviors within their historical context instead of viewing them per se. The encyclopedia is an extension of Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, yet where Mackay viewed most outbreaks as group folly, we are much more sympathetic to the participants' point of view.

Q: Any key points you'd really like to make about the encyclopedia?

A: Human history is bloody interesting! The book is a testament to the enormous richness and diversity of the ethnographic record. The message of the book is that no one is immune from social delusions. The more immune you think you are, the more vulnerable you become. Many of these behaviors are seen as relics of the past, spread by fear and ignorance, never to be repeated in modern Western society, yet they keep happening. The medieval European witch mania is a classic example. Yet, during the 1980s and 90s, at the dawn of the 21st century, a Satanic cult molestation scare led to scores of daycare workers being falsely accused and imprisoned. The Satanism Scare (at least 60 panics over imaginary devil cultists abusing children during the early 1990's) occurred in the United States of America, the most highly developed nation on the planet, with every advantage that education and communications have to offer. Rumors, urban legends, crazes and other social delusions are part of the human condition and will never be eliminated. We must learn to live with them.