What determines the specific nature of the disease which attacks a person thus prostrated by fear? Men are frequently prostrated by fear in storms or fire or earthquakes or accidents, and no disease results. It is because they have been not thinking and brooding over any special morbid conditions. But in an epidemic, say of yellow fever, the subjects connected with the disease are strongly pictured on the mind. They are talked of, read about, discussed and written about, until the mind is full of images of fever, delirium, black vomit, jaundice, death, funerals, etc. When such is the case, no microbes or bacteria are needed to produce an outburst of yellow fever. The whole mass of horrors already stamped upon the mind is simply reflected and repeated in the body.
"As a man thinketh, so is he," said Solomon. Thoughts become things, apprehensions take form and substance, and lo! the disease. In the height of his happiness and prosperity, Job permitted himself to brood in silent fear over the possibility of losses and misfortunes, and he had at last to exclaim, "The thing which I greatly feared has come upon me."
Sudden and great fears are not frequent. The fears of every day, the constant apprehensions and anxieties of life, which are really fears of impending evil, prey upon our vitality and lessen our power of resisting, so that any passing disease may be photographed on our minds and seen upon our bodies.
Fear is itself a contagious disease, and is sometimes reflected from one to another mind with great rapidity. It needs no speech or sign to propagate it, for by psychological laws we are just beginning to comprehend, it passes from one to another, from the healthy to the sick, from the doctor or the nurse to the patient, from the mother to the child. Thus malignant influences may be cast around us by even our best friends and would-be helpers, under whose baleful shadow, without our even knowing of its existence, we and our children may sicken and die.
The summer of 1888 was signalized by a moderately severe epidemic of yellow fever at Jacksonville, Florida, and a very extensive epidemic of fear throughout the Southern states. The latter disease was much more contagious than the former, and much less amenable to treatment. This mental malady visited every little town, village, and railway station, and kept the people in a chill of trepidation for many weeks. This causeless and senseless terror originated many precipitate and unjust measures of self-defense. Under its influence public and private rights were disrespected, and the panic greatly intensified. In a few cases the refugee was driven from the door, the hungry left unfed, the sick unattended. There was exhibited on a small scale, here and there, that same principle of terror which is manifested in a burning theatre, on a sinking ship, or in a stampeded army, when brave men suddenly become cowards, and wise men fools, and merciful men brutes.