Typical among the greater
exhibitions of this were those which began in the Methodist
chapel at Redruth in Cornwall--convulsions, leaping, jumping,
until some four thousand persons were seized by it. The same
thing is seen in the ruder parts of America at "revivals" and
camp meetings. Nor in the ruder parts of America alone. In June,
1893, at a funeral in the city of Brooklyn, one of the
mourners having fallen into hysterical fits, several other
cases at once appeared in various parts of the church edifice,
and some of the patients were so seriously affected that they
were taken to a hospital.
In still another field these exhibitions are seen, but more
after a medieval pattern: in the Tigretier of Abyssinia we have
epidemics of dancing which seek and obtain miraculous cures.
Reports of similar manifestations are also sent from missionaries
from the west coast of Africa, one of whom sees in some of them the
characteristics of cases of possession mentioned in our Gospels,
and is therefore inclined to attribute them to Satan.
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