November 20, 2014 • 41 mins
Throughout the history of the world, there have been many cases of what is known as collective hysteria - groups of people, usually young women, who all exhibit the same physical symptoms of non-existent conditions. Is it psychosomatic? Is it group think?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and Jerry's over there to the left, and that makes
the Stuff you Should Know got the eighteen. Yeah, in
(00:23):
the hissy, I call face what I'm face? Of course
your face, look at you. I would be a combination
of Murdoch and Mr Tak Yeah. Oh, your hair is
kind of spiky in the middle today. Yeah, Jerry, I
don't know what she'd be. I guess she'd be the leader.
She'd be Hannibal. Oh yeah, you know she's smoking a
(00:45):
cigar right now, wearing a black glove. When did you
start the sucking cigars? Jerry? That's weird, very timely. I
said a team. I don't want to slag off guests
produce a knoll. He's not exactly be team. We'll just
call ourself the O G S. Okay, now that we
have that established, we are the O G S. We
need bowling shirts that say as much. On the bad
(01:08):
you're feeling good, I'm feeling uh nauseous and dizzy. Oh well, Chuck,
did you happen to see somebody else who is nauseous
and dizzy. Well, Jerry was last week, and then a
few more people in the office, so I just figured
we all had the same thing. All right, I'm gonna
diagnose this, Okay. It's called collective hysteria, also known, I
(01:29):
think more appropriately is mass psychogenic disorder. I think when
you add the word hysteria to this, it ticks on
certain dimensions that a lot of people could find very objectionable.
You know, hysterics, hysteria. It's like um dogs and cats
living together. Yeah, but I think it has it has
(01:49):
a definite um gender specific connotation to it from over
the years, like women were supposedly very hysterical. So the
the idea of diagnosing somebody as hysterical under any circumstances,
it's kind of it's had him out to panning him,
patting him on the head. Yeah here, nice lady, you're
you're just a little hysterical. Do you just go calm
(02:11):
down and bake something right? Stop being crazy? Uh? No.
Mass psychogenic disorder instead is just kind of like whoa,
your brain just did something pretty neat. And that is
the case for mass psychogenic disorder. If you ask me um.
In this article Chuck written by Jacob Silverman, Jeopardy Champion.
Yeah well yeah, yeah you won on Jeopardy. That makes
(02:34):
him a champion? Or yeah, I think so. He wasn't
like the ultimate Champion, but he won a couple of episodes, right,
which is why they should have a word for I
guess like the champion is like the one who won
at all Ken Jennings, Yeah, or um Watson, who's that
the IBM computer? Yeah, so Jeopardy winner. Jacob Silverman wrote
(02:55):
this article years back, and he did a pretty great
job of citing a contemporary outbreak of mass psychogenic disorder
that had been going on around that time down in Mexico,
down Mexico, way in Chalco, Mexico, at a boarding school.
There apparently was a girls boarding school and the girls
(03:16):
that went to school they were just twelve to seventeen,
and all of a sudden they started, well, there was
an outbreak, a weird outbreak. There was vomiting, I believe,
trouble walking. Um, there was fever that's weird, nausea and
so the the people running this boarding school like, um,
(03:38):
what's going on? This is not good? Uh? And they
had no idea. The girls went on Christmas break for
ten days, came back, and the thing just took off
again like wildfire. Yeah, six d girls, um showed these
symptoms and nobody could figure it out. Um. They did
a lot of tests, they brought in people to like
check out the facilities, and because as you'll see, there's
(04:01):
a trend there. Um, you know here in the West,
they start to blame it, usually on um, like environmental
poisoning of some kind. Right, Um, you know there's some
sort of toxins that is poisoned everybody. But they didn't
find anything there, and eventually, um, they said, this is uh,
what do you call it? Psychosomatic mass psychogenic disorder? Okay,
(04:25):
mass psychogenic disorder, but no, that is one of the
one of the names that it's mass psychogenic disorder, collective hysteria,
mass hysteria, or mass psychosomatic reaction. They're all saying the
same thing they are, which is you're not well. Was
about so you're not really sick, But that is not
exactly true, because that's one thing that differentiates this from
(04:45):
something that's just in your head is you actually do
manifest physical symptoms. Right. Yeah, there's this article written by
a m d. Named Timothy F. Jones from the Tennessee
Department of Health way back in the heavy days of
two thousand, your two thousand in the future. Um, and
he writes that you if you are experiencing mass psychogenic disorder,
(05:07):
it is not just in your head. That the symptoms
that you have are actually very real. Even though there's
no toxic cause that they couldn't find some sort of
environmental poison or anything like that, the symptoms are extremely real. Yeah,
it's just psycho somatic. It's just basically the brain has
been tricked into causing this response. Yeah, and this has happened. Um,
(05:30):
They've documented about eighty cases throughout history and apparently the
National Institutes of Health gets about two cases per week reported.
But um, which is I mean, like that's that's way
more common than than you would think, you know, yeah,
I would think there'd be more than eight, because I mean,
these have happened. If you go back and look at
I mean, there's all sorts of crazy lists on the
(05:51):
internet about these cases that date back to like the
fourteenth century. Medieval dancing mania was one of them. Yeah,
the dancing plague. Yeah, yeah, that's in there. The Salem
Witchcraft trials or the Salem witchcraft I guess what led
to the trials was UM supposedly attributed to this kind
of thing. Uh. One weird thing about this condition is
(06:17):
more times than not, it is affects females, Yeah, and
young females even more specifically teenagers or even younger, which
is as far as it goes right now, inexplicable UM.
And it's kind of a prickly issue, you know, like
again you kind of come back to the idea of
calling it hysteria. You know, the fact that it does
(06:38):
tend to afflict women or girls more than them boys.
UM is apparently one means of diagnosing psychogenic disordered mass psychogogical.
That's like one of the first things we'll say is like,
all this the sickness is happening in this place, the
school wherever, and the doctor will say, is it a
bunch of girls? And then that will clue them in
(07:00):
that hey, this might be what we're dealing with here.
And but the problem is no one has any idea why,
and there have been explanations of things like um, Uh,
I guess girls, this is this is girls culturally acceptable
outlet for raging against the patriarchy. Sure, even if they
(07:20):
don't necessarily feel that that's what they're doing. This is
there there, Uh, this is the symptoms of that. That's one. Yeah,
I thought this was a pretty interesting part. What article
was that from Slate? Uh? There was uh yeah, one
called mass Asteria and Upstate New York by Ruth Graham
was on Slate. That was a good one. It was
a really good one. And we'll get to that case
in a sect. But um, I thought it was pretty interesting.
(07:43):
In one part, it says, um, and this is a
quote from someone writing about something and said inform, if
not unconscious intent, it is to protest the sexual repressiveness,
rigid double standard of female team culture. Um. But they
were writing about Beatlemania, Yeah, which is interesting because it's
sort of has a similar vibe of uh, young ladies
(08:05):
being repressed, um, not having an outlet, and so they
see the Beatles and they go berserk and faint and
cry and scream collectively. Whereas boys they're more prone to
just act out if they're not feeling good. Girls are
trained to keep things inward. And they also point out
that ladies and young ladies are more prone to seek
(08:25):
a doctor's help for something. Uh, they say that may
account for the bias right there, like guys just won't
go to the doctor exactly. You have to be careful though,
and in just diagnosing MATHS psychogenital disorder, you physicians out
there who are listening to encounter a case like this
UM it just by basing it on the fact that
it is affecting more girls than boys. Because there's at
(08:47):
least one case in Great Britain where I think girls
were afflicted by more than half more than double the
number of girls were afflicted by this, and it turned
out that they were retaining cucumbers being served in the
lunch room. Yeah, and everyone knows boys hate cucumbers, and
so I mean they didn't need anyone, right. But this
is one of the issues with dealing with UM MATHS
(09:09):
psychogenic disorder, and that it looks and acts a lot
like some sort of weird epidemic. That basically it looks
like either a UM something like bioterrorism, uh, rapidly spreading
affection infection or affection if lemania and then acute toxic exposure.
(09:31):
That's what it looks like. It's like one person gets sick.
This is your index case and all of a sudden,
everyone around them suddenly has the same symptoms. Yeah, and
it's like you said, it's super dangerous to just dismiss
that as oh it's all in your head, silly little ladies.
You can't do that because what if it is something
for real? But it's also a double edged sword, is
(09:54):
that doctor pointed out, Um, you start ordering batteries of
tests and it it It can go both ways. It
can Um. What the old saying is, if you order
enough tests, you're gonna find something, so it can fuel
that fire. But you also can't not run any tests
and just dismiss it. Uh. So it's a very fine
line that physicians walk when dealing with stuff like this,
(10:16):
for sure. Indeed, apparently UM study of mass psychogenic disorder
has found that it's more prevalent in isolated communities and
in situations where um, they are highly rigid, formalized, structured rules,
like a Catholic school in Mexico exactly, um or again
(10:38):
um Salem, Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, you know. Um.
And apparently, between nineteen seventy three and half of all
the outbreaks of psychogenetic or psychogenic illness took place in schools,
so that that's possibly in part by due to kids
(11:02):
being susceptible to it more um, but also because of
that that rigid, formalized structure. Yeah. And there's also usually
a top down effect, like it'll start with a teacher
or an older student, and then the younger students follow suit,
which if you're talking influence, would make sense for sure.
There was one very famous case. Um. Apparently there's not
(11:25):
very many actual academic studies on this, but there's one
that came out of the New England Journal of Medicine
UM that that described a case in Tennessee where a
teacher noticed, um, some weird gas odor, a gassy odor, uh,
(11:45):
like the chemical kind. Yeah, not like the guy on
the front road to right exactly, um, and she apparently
started suffering symptoms uh, And all of a sudden, like
a hundred and eighties students and teachers had to go
to the emergency room. The school was shut down for
two weeks. They did all this environmental testing, couldn't find anything,
(12:07):
and finally traced it back to UM psychogenic a mass
psychogenic disorder, if that's what it didn't and then everyone
In most of these cases we should point out everyone
it starts feeling better. Yes, like in Mexico and then
the school in Tennessee. It's it's not like they went
on to die or anything. Yeah. So in the school
(12:28):
in Mexico, the these girls were at a boarding school.
They were only allowed to see their parents, I think
like three times a year. Yeah, they couldn't even call.
It's like it sounds more like a prison. They were
allowed letters when they went home. Immediately their symptoms cleared up.
The problem is that doesn't automatically say oh, well, it's
obviously mass psychogenic distorder. It could be an environmental toxin
(12:51):
that they were being exposed to still uh at the
school and we're removed from But I think the the
definite problem osis is mass psychogenic disorder in this case.
That's right. What we're talking about is a sort of
version of the no Seebo effect, which we've talked about before,
and we will get into that right up to this break.
(13:14):
So the no cebo effect, we talked about that, and
what the placebo effect. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, I
was trying to be more clever. I thought we were
more clever than that. Uh no cebo. I think we
said in that other podcast he was Latin for eyeshall harm.
And that's basically whereas you take a placebo thinking it's
gonna help you out, and it does help you out
(13:37):
because the mind is powerful. The no cebo effect is
thinking something bad will result, like my teachers getting sick.
I think I feel a little sick too, and then oh, hey,
my neighbor is feeling a little sick. I think I'm
feeling a little sick too. Or this this drug trial
that I'm on, I was told that I could possibly
get some sort of gastro intestin old distress. Yeah, and
(13:59):
even I've been given a sugar pill. I'm now going
yeah because in my mind because of the Noebo effect.
There was a famous experiment or case from eight six
where there was a woman who had a rose allergy
and they showed her an artificial rose and she began
to I guess it was convincing, and she began to
(14:20):
have her allergic reaction and they said, ah, ha, it's
fake and you're faking, and uh she said, oh, well,
I think I'm feeling better now, and supposedly that cured
or of her real allergy to real roses. I couldn't
find a lot to back that up. But is it
it is a story. Yeah, well no, that's a I
(14:42):
mean it was in I can't remember the journal, but
it was really well yeah, it was a real deal thing.
And um, I don't I didn't get to the bottom
of why they presented this woman with a fake rose
or whatever, but they definitely didn't. This definitely happened. And um,
the even the author of the study was saying, like
(15:03):
this woman, she wasn't faking. It was like she she
had real symptoms hives or hives exactly. I can see those. Um.
I think they call it like a rose cold or
something like that. You can get you know, stuffy, your
eyes are watering, your your nose is running, that kind
of thing. And what's interesting is some researchers have studied
(15:26):
the no sebo effect and they basically have isolated this
this chemical that gets released when the no cebo effects
going on. And again we should say it's not just
um making your nose running or releasing histamines or anything
like that is pain too, Like you can you can
experience pain even though nothing's there to give you pain,
(15:49):
just because of the noebo effect. What they found was
a um A, I guess, uh hormone, I believe. Are
you ready? I'm gonna try this one? Uh, coli cisto kinon.
That sounds great, thanks man. I haven't looked at the word,
but it sounds right. Coli cisto kinon. Um. Do you
(16:10):
see it now? That's totally right. I totally did. So.
It's a hormone, right, and it gets released and it actually, um,
it helps you experience pain. So it's a nasty little hormone.
But they found in testing with the no cebo effect
that if you block this, you can also block the
no cebo effect. So that proves two things. Does that
(16:30):
block pain though, like your pain receptors? So does that
mean if you slam your pand in the door you
won't feel it if you can block this? Yes? So um,
if you can block coli cisto canon, yes, it will
keep you from um hypersensitivity to pain. I believe. And
this guy named Fabrizio Benedetti I think was also in
(16:51):
the Strokes back. He uh, he was testing out the
nocebo effect and found that if he told people that
he was giving them an injection, which is it's a
pretty cruel test. But effective. These post stop people who
had just come out of surgery. Uh, We're given an
(17:12):
injection and told this injection is going to increase your
pain in thirty minutes. I'm sorry, we have to give
it to it's part of the procedure. He gave some
people an injection of saline and they reported an increase
in pain, and they all went behind the two way
mirror and laughed right there like yeah. And then they
(17:32):
gave somebody, like the other group, the control group, uh,
a chemical an injection that blocks that pain. But they
were told that it was going to increase their pain.
But they were given a chemical that blocks uh cola
sister kinon and the effect didn't take place. They didn't
report an increase in pain even though they were told
(17:52):
they would. Yes, so they So this guy is saying,
like the no cebo effect is real. Like when when
they say it's not just in your head, it's you're
experiencing the same thing as if you were experiencing somebody's
stabbing you. You know, that's when you have to start
asking yourself those deep philosophical questions. Interesting, Um, there's another
(18:16):
case that's have you ever seen the movie Safe The
Todd Haynes movie with Julianne Moore. No, it's from like
the mid nineties, and she played a lady that um
started to have environmental sickness. UM just in the air,
and she's got sort of like increasingly UM crazy as
(18:37):
the movie went on, as far as scrubbing things and
locking herself in her house and making her house a
clean environment. It was good and UM there's there's a
true story though of a lady in London, UM named
Debbie Bird. She's a health spot manager that says that
she's allergic to e m F electromagnetic fields. And it's
(18:59):
an actual thing now you know, there's more than her claiming.
It's called e S electro magnetic sensitivity. Where she has
basically transformed her house. She painted it black. She said
she's allergic to computers, cell phones, microwaves. She had her
house rewired, uh to make it basically e m F free. Uh.
(19:20):
She and her husband's sleep under a silver plated mosquito
net to keep out radio waves and covered all her
windows with protective films. And she said she feel a
lot better now. So I saw that, yes, electromagnetic sensitivity
that if you expose somebody to a an electromagnetic field
and then just tell them that you are, and don't
(19:42):
they have the same reaction, which would suggest that it's
it's no c bow. Well, it's super fascinating because you
see cases like this from that to like gluten sensitivity
becoming a big thing now and people some people contend that, well,
it's maybe a collective hysteria going on. If you think
you're going to be sensitive to gluten, then you're gonna
(20:03):
be sensitive to things that contain gluten. And I'm not
saying that people because that's a very hot topic it is,
but um, some people have claimed that, well, we'll talk
a little bit more about things that exacerbate the mass
psychogenic disorder and the no cebo effect right after this,
(20:29):
so chuck back in two thousand seven, in New Zealand,
UH a drug called el trokes in. It was a
pretty widespread drug in New Zealand. It's a hormone replacement
drug and it was the only one that the government
would pay for. So most people who were on this
hormone replacement therapy, we're using l trokes in. And it
had been that way for like decades. It was just
(20:51):
an established trug Glaxo Smith client hormone replacement Glaxo Smith Klein.
I think just those there's no welcome involved. UM changed,
just the like the outer the inert qualities of it,
like the shape of the pill, the color um, and
I think that's about it. But the the active ingredient
(21:14):
was exactly the same in two thousand seven. Uh. And
when they released it, all of a sudden, some reports
of bad side effects were starting to trickle in, and
the government was like, wait, what's going on here. It
got a little bit of media attention and more reports
started trickling in, and then the media attention grew, and
(21:36):
the reports grew and grew, and apparently the reporting of
adverse effects of el trucks in increased two thousandfold in
a year and a half because of the look of
the bill, because of the look of the pill. They
went back and studied this and they found that in
areas where there was more reporting about these adverse effects
(21:58):
being reported for all trucks in the more adverse effects
were being reported in that area. And that kind of
reveals one of the um risk factors for mass psychogenic
disorder is the media. It's actually spread through the media.
Most easily. Yeah, they have a point though, I mean, um,
I know. In this article too, it points out that
(22:18):
pills that are blue and green are usually associated with drowsiness,
pills that are orange or yellow are not. And I
don't know if that's why they market it that way
or if it's the opposite, as we just see it
that way because of products like niquil and day quill.
But the one that makes you sleepy is green and blue,
and the one that keeps you awake or keep you
(22:38):
awake but doesn't make you drowsy orange. I thought about it.
I think, I mean, what do you associate with like
daytime sunrise? Yellow? Orange? What do you associate with night time?
Like something tranquil like blue? Yeah, Scotch scotch amber. Uh yeah,
I mean you think of That's what I think it
(22:59):
came from. I think the pills came after the association
rather than the other way around. Yeah, I think I even,
like when I get a prescription for something, when I
see the pill, I make a judgment on it before
I've even had it, just by saying, well, don't look
at that thing that Yeah, that's a horse pill or
that's a capsule with you know, powdery stuff inside that's
(23:21):
different than the chalky one. It's you. I think you
just make an association. I don't think I have any
preconceived notions on what a larger pill will do to
me or a capsule will do to me other than
a tablet. But I think it's interesting, though, how you
make these judgment calls but without even thinking about totally.
You know, I mean, like you're you're you probably don't
(23:42):
sit there and look at a pill in your hand.
You just take it and just make some sort of um,
almost unconscious judgments about it. Yeah, it may remind you
another pill that helps you that you're not even remembering exactly,
so that would be placebo. Yeah that's great effect, not great, No,
and it pusses a lot of problems. For instance, there
(24:04):
was a study I think in the nineties that found
that women who believed that they were prone to heart
disease were four times likelier to die of heart disease
than women who didn't believe they are prone to it,
even though they had all the exact same risk factors,
basically the same risk risk factors. There was nothing differentiating
these women aside from a belief that they were going
(24:26):
to die from heart disease or a belief that they weren't,
and that led to a four time fourfold increase in
deaths from that just basically from a belief, is what
it suggests. Yeah, we well, it's sort of like the
I know it's kind of cheesy, but the p M
A the positive mental attitude. I think we've all know
someone who walks around so and so sick. Oh, I
(24:49):
know I'm gonna get it. I just know I'm gonna
get sick, or you know, I just know I'm gonna
get cancer because it runs in my family. That I
think that has an effect on things. I have to agree.
I know some of our more skeptical listeners will are
pulling their hair out right now, but I totally agree
with you. When we did our show in Toronto, on
the way back, you me and I flow out of
(25:09):
Buffalo and I was feeling a little down, but like
at the point where I feel like you can talk
yourself into staying healthy. Positive mental attitude. I guess that's
what you call it. But we were leaving right at
about dusk and the sun was just beaming through the
windows and illuminating every single microbe visible microbe in the air.
(25:33):
I could see them like just going into my nose
in my mouth, and I'm like, I couldn't stop, Like
I couldn't. I was like, I'm not gonna get sick.
I'm not gonna get sick. And man, did I ever
get sick. But I noticed that right when we took off,
and no, you know what it was. Somebody shut one
of their um their window covers shade exactly is the
(25:56):
word that I was looking for. Somebody shut their shade
and I couldn't see anymore, and I immediately started to
feel less symptomatic. Immediately. It was like turning off a light.
And I still got sick, but I was just drowning.
And basically what my brain was interpreting is like being
assaulted by foreign invaders, which I am all the time,
but I normally can't see them. Yeah, well I've done
(26:18):
I do that all the time. When I opened my
uh the curtains in the bedroom and I'll see you
in the morning, I'll see that stuff in the air,
and I'm just thinking, oh, man, that's what I'm walking
around breathing in everything dog hair and cat hair and
Emily hair. So your lungs are just chocked full of it.
So one of the one of the problems this poses
(26:39):
chuck for physicians is that we expect doctors, or we
want doctors to be transparent, to not lie to us. Yeah,
we talked a lot about this lately. I feel like, yeah,
we've talked a lot about diseases. Some of our um
hypochondria listeners have been like, police, stop that talking about
diseason because now I've got more orgal on, I'm gonna
(27:01):
have like some sort of toxic exposure um and then
very soon leprosy spoiler. So, uh, the problem is if
you tell somebody that's going into surgery, hey, by the way, um,
you know you you might have trouble walking, you might
(27:23):
feel nauseous for the next six months, you like, all
this stuff that could be associated with which we demand
from our doctors. It's been shown that if you are
fearful or in despair going into surgery, that's associated with
longer healing times and a higher risk of post operative infection. Right,
So if you have the no cebo effect where doctors
(27:45):
are saying, okay, if I tell somebody, and it's been
proven time after time that in drug trials, people who
are still are given placebo will drop out of drug
trials because they're experiencing these negative side effects even though
they're given the sugar pill. So if you're a doctor
and you you know that you are telling somebody something
(28:07):
that ultimately may end up harming them, and you've sworn
an oath to do no harm, you've got a conundrum
going on right now. And that's what the no cebo
effect poses. It's the problem the no cebo effect poses
for modern physicians, like how much should they tell you
if you're gonna tell somebody that they're gonna feel nauseous
for six months even though they probably won't, should you
(28:29):
tell them and give them a chance to to basically
have the psychosomatic symptom, or tell them they're going to
feel great. Well, that's another one. Somebody says the solution
to this is just frame it differently, Like, don't say
there's a chance you're gonna have um nausea for six months.
Say half of a percent of patients who go through
(28:49):
the same procedure that you're about to go through have
nausea for six months five percent. Don't you're giving them
the same information. It's just framework positively, Yeah, and uh
that one doctor who wrote the article on collective hysteria said, Um,
what he recommends is not naming the illness, said that
can help out. Um, because as soon as you give
(29:12):
something a name, then it just instantly you know you
have something you can call it, and everyone's calling it that,
or the media picks up on it and it's a thing. Yeah,
And that's actually again one of the one of the
risk factors in the spread of mass psychogenic illness is
the larger the response, the emergency medical response to it,
and then hence the larger the media response to it,
(29:34):
the larger the outbreak tends to be. It's called line
of sight exposure. Just knowing somebody is sick or seeing
somebody sick can give you the same symptoms. I'm sure
if you see a news story that all the other
news agencies are running that says, uh, there's been some
weird chemical leak in the air in Atlanta. Uh, people
are gonna start walking around and coughing and saying, I'm
(29:58):
not feeling so good. I have a bitter taste in
my mouth. There's microbes everywhere. Well, here's a case from
that article you sent that I think is super fascinating
the one in upstate New York because it is not
a rash or um a call for nausea, It is
Tourette syndrome. Uh. Sixteen year old UM, young lady named
(30:19):
Laurie Brounwell, Uh what year was this? A couple of
years ago? Yeah, not too long ago, I think um
and Corinth, New York. Um was at her school's homecoming
dance and lost consciousness. Um, this is after she banged
at a concert. Sorry, man, I thought, yeah, she was
head banging at a concert. I wish I knew a
(30:39):
concert that was so me too. I didn't find it anywhere.
Apparently passed out there and had passing outfits. Uh, involuntary
twitching and clapping, started twisting her hair, fluttering her fingers, Hey, hey, hey,
starting stuff like that, and the doctor said, you know
what You've got, Turette syndrome. So Tourette's syndrome is is.
(30:59):
We've had a podcast on It's real and it's not psychosomatic. Um.
But uh, since that time, fourteen other students along with her,
thirteen girls and one boy started exhibiting at Leroy Junior
High School. I'm sorry, Junior Senior High School. Started coming
down with threats, right, which is not contagious, and it
is not contagious at all. Um. Aaron Brockovitch got on
(31:21):
the case, um, famous environmental activists, and she said, now,
I think this has got to do with this train
derailment from nineteen seventy that dumped cyanide all over this town. Um,
and I didn't see where they found any uh legitimate effects. Right. Again,
that's the confounding thing about mass psychogenetic disorders, that it
(31:43):
is still possible that there is some weird toxin in
the environment that is causing this. Like maybe there was
exposure to cyanide that gotten these people's brains and all
gave them to it. And if you stand back and
look at it, you're like, to Turette syndrome isn't contagious.
That doesn't mean that you can't all come down with
(32:05):
Thurette syndrome from exposure to a toxin. It's just still
it's this X factor that's out there that you can't
just necessarily rule out. Yeah, and I believe in that
case too, the UM those fourteen students didn't end up
with Thurette syndrome. That was a good episode Man, I
love Turette syndrome one. Yeah, it's an oldie, oldie, but
a goody and it all came from head banging. That's
(32:28):
how it started at a Nickelback show. Yeah, because Corinth
is near Canada. Canada isn't let nickel Back out any longer?
Are they caged in there? Nice? Uh? There's another case
of the Toxic Lady. Did you hear this one? In Riverside, California,
woman named Gloria Ramirez. Um. Yeah, she was dubbed the
(32:49):
toxic Lady in n She had cervical cancer and was
being treated and all the medical staff started to get
sick that was treating her. Um. This sounds gross, but
they say her body exuded a garlicky fruity smell and
her blood had flecks of what looked like paper um,
which sounds called Morglon's actually nice, you like that um.
(33:12):
And they said that most of the people that got
sick while treating her were women, more women than men,
and they all took blood test and came back normal
and the health department said mass hysteria. So that's funny.
Because I looked, I remembered that story and I was like,
I wonder if that was mass hysteria, and I looked
it up and I found that No, it was an
environmental toxic O it was. That's what I found. So
(33:34):
they called it mass hysteria the time, and then later
found out, I think like a year or two later,
she was using some sort of salve or something on
her skin and they think that in interactive with her
biochemistry and really did produce toxic toxic gas. She said
it maybe this fruit garlic salv exactly. That's interacting badly
with my pancreas. Oh well, uh, this list needs to
(33:57):
be updated. That that That is a fascinating in case
people got really sick from that. I think I remember
hearing about that too. Yeah. Well, I'm glad they found
a real cause in that case from what I understand.
But that's that's that's the point. Like you can say, well,
obviously there's women were more affective than men, right, Well,
is that because there's more women in the nursing profession
(34:18):
and there were more nurses in the room. There's a
lot of different things you have to take into account
before you just write it off. Sometimes it is reel
like sick building syndrome. Yeah, that's a tough one because
after the Opeque oil embargo, apparently people started designing buildings
to be more air tight, so your ventilation ventilation system
(34:39):
was really important, and these buildings have an age necessarily
very well, so the ventilation system is not doing what
it's supposed to any longer, and so they think possibly
that's leading to what we know as sick building syndrome,
which is malaise when you don't feel good when you
go to work. But some studies have found like, no,
that is the better predictor of sick building syndrome is
(35:02):
job stress or job dissatisfaction. Um, if you have a
building full of people who don't like their jobs, you're
gonna have a building full of people with sick building syndrome.
But if you go on to say like a local
government's website or whatever, and you look at sick building syndrome,
it's a it's treated as a real thing. Yeah, well,
it definitely affects your gastro intestinal like stress does. We
(35:23):
also apparently you can set off bouts of asthma um,
which is another reason why they think you might have
something to do with like volatile organic compounds in the
ventilation system or new carpeting, that kind of stuff offcasting. Man,
you you smell that stuff when you open up a
new product. Right. There's also the dancing plague, which we
mentioned briefly. Tell me about it. Uh, Fraul Trophia July
(35:47):
fourteen eighteen, went out on the streets of Strasbourg, France
and started dancing even though there was no music, and
dancing like a maniac for three straight days, and all
these people started dancing with her, saying this is a
good time. Um said, within a month, a hundred people
were dancing with her and couldn't stop and hyperventilating, hallucinating.
(36:09):
Some drop dead of heart attack and stroke and exhaustion.
And the authority said, let's just hire a band and
let him dance it out, because they've got the hot blood,
is what they called it. And so they did, and UM,
a lot of people died as a result, and it
said four hundred people in the end were struck. Uh.
(36:29):
I don't think they died, but we're dancers. And then
it just stopped. And that's when they blame a lot
of people blame on ergot poisoning, which we've mentioned before.
Got poisoning. Those people were clearly tripping on something, they
got the hot blood. But what it sounds like you
just described is basically how Tom Hanks invented jogging in
the seventies. Yogging. Yeah, they just started running and people
(36:52):
started following. I wish that part had been cut out
of that movie. Yeah, I thought that it was a
weird thing that should have been on the editing room floor.
They really kind of derailed things for a while for me.
I don't think that movie's age well though. Uh. Other
people say though that it was Sydenham's Korea disorder linked
(37:15):
to strep throughout in rheumatic fever that causes dance like
twitches um. And then of course modern medical historians say
it was mass psychosis. I would go with that one, yeah,
I mean back then it made more sense though, when
during the Salem witch trials and before they knew anything
about medicine, and you could just say you got the
hot blood or you're having the fits, like yeah, exactly.
(37:38):
These modern cases the ones that really freaked me out
because so much as explainable. Now here's the thing that chuck.
We've always explained. It was something that comes easily to mind.
So back in the day before science and medicine. It
was the devil possessing you. And don't think that people
weren't freaked out when they thought that the devil was
there and possessing people in the same way that you know,
(38:01):
you're freaked out by the idea that it's cyanide in
the soil from a train derailment, from just exactly, which
is the deadliest of all the manias. But it's just
as real to the experiencer. And it all comes down
to people just basically being stick of the establishment and
letting loose for a while. I don't want to go
(38:22):
to work nice, so I'll dance. Have you got anything else? Uh?
If you want to know more about collective hysteria, which
is the name of this article, type those words in
the search bar at how stuff works dot com and
it will bring it up. And I said, search bars
means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this
(38:43):
UM episode on grief. We've got a lot of great
feedback and that continue. Uh, they continue to roll in. Hey, guys,
just dumbled upon your podcast through my tune in radio app.
I guess that's a mini plug We're available there now. Um,
I've devoured all all of the six hundred plus shows
and maybe a new listener. But I'm already a lifelong fan.
(39:05):
So why I'm writing in guys is I lost my
twin sister back in two thousand ten. It was a
rough time because as a fraternal twin me being the boy,
I looked at her not only as a sister, but
as a mother and friend. Too, long story short, I
wanted to comment on the Grief show some time ago.
I've dealt with my grief through my artwork. I'm a
small town artist from Johnson City, Tennessee, and I rarely
(39:27):
can get noticed or any attention with my art. I
wanted to share my new piece I've just finished after
listening to how comic books work. I'm a huge fan
of Marvel comics and I hope you both enjoy this.
And he sent this really cool. I think it was
like every member of the Marvel universe had to be
in this picture that he did. I didn't see that.
It's really really neat, just jam packed full of Marvel
comic heroes and villains. Um So, Josh and Chuck, thanks
(39:50):
for the inspiration, laughs and getting through every day at
the office. PS. My twin Jessica passed away from epilepsy
actually a condition called sue dep sudden unexplained death of epilepsy.
My mother is trying to raise awareness because November is
Epilepsy Awareness Month. So if you guys wouldn't mind mentioning
this on the show, she would be so happy for that. Also,
(40:11):
an epilepsy show would be cool too. Um. Not a
lot is discussed about it, and that is Jason Flack.
And Jason wrote you back that is heartbreaking about your
twin sister. Very sorry to hear that, um, And we
will definitely do a show on epilepsy. And since this
is November though, people should go out and find out
what they can during National Epilepsy Month. We'll follow up
(40:34):
with the show. I don't know if it'll be in November,
but we'll get to that one for sure. And thanks
for that piece of art. And if anyone is interested
in a great comic book artist from Johnson City, Tennessee,
if a lot worse than Jason Flack. Jason, thank you
very much for sharing that with everybody. That means a
lot to us. If you want to share with us
and all of our listeners out there, you can tweet
(40:56):
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email with attached artwork to
stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com and has
always joined us at our home on the web, stuff
you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
(41:18):
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and Jerry's over there to the left, and that makes
the Stuff you Should Know got the eighteen. Yeah, in
(00:23):
the hissy, I call face what I'm face? Of course
your face, look at you. I would be a combination
of Murdoch and Mr Tak Yeah. Oh, your hair is
kind of spiky in the middle today. Yeah, Jerry, I
don't know what she'd be. I guess she'd be the leader.
She'd be Hannibal. Oh yeah, you know she's smoking a
(00:45):
cigar right now, wearing a black glove. When did you
start the sucking cigars? Jerry? That's weird, very timely. I
said a team. I don't want to slag off guests
produce a knoll. He's not exactly be team. We'll just
call ourself the O G S. Okay, now that we
have that established, we are the O G S. We
need bowling shirts that say as much. On the bad
(01:08):
you're feeling good, I'm feeling uh nauseous and dizzy. Oh well, Chuck,
did you happen to see somebody else who is nauseous
and dizzy. Well, Jerry was last week, and then a
few more people in the office, so I just figured
we all had the same thing. All right, I'm gonna
diagnose this, Okay. It's called collective hysteria, also known, I
(01:29):
think more appropriately is mass psychogenic disorder. I think when
you add the word hysteria to this, it ticks on
certain dimensions that a lot of people could find very objectionable.
You know, hysterics, hysteria. It's like um dogs and cats
living together. Yeah, but I think it has it has
(01:49):
a definite um gender specific connotation to it from over
the years, like women were supposedly very hysterical. So the
the idea of diagnosing somebody as hysterical under any circumstances,
it's kind of it's had him out to panning him,
patting him on the head. Yeah here, nice lady, you're
you're just a little hysterical. Do you just go calm
(02:11):
down and bake something right? Stop being crazy? Uh? No.
Mass psychogenic disorder instead is just kind of like whoa,
your brain just did something pretty neat. And that is
the case for mass psychogenic disorder. If you ask me um.
In this article Chuck written by Jacob Silverman, Jeopardy Champion.
Yeah well yeah, yeah you won on Jeopardy. That makes
(02:34):
him a champion? Or yeah, I think so. He wasn't
like the ultimate Champion, but he won a couple of episodes, right,
which is why they should have a word for I
guess like the champion is like the one who won
at all Ken Jennings, Yeah, or um Watson, who's that
the IBM computer? Yeah, so Jeopardy winner. Jacob Silverman wrote
(02:55):
this article years back, and he did a pretty great
job of citing a contemporary outbreak of mass psychogenic disorder
that had been going on around that time down in Mexico,
down Mexico, way in Chalco, Mexico, at a boarding school.
There apparently was a girls boarding school and the girls
(03:16):
that went to school they were just twelve to seventeen,
and all of a sudden they started, well, there was
an outbreak, a weird outbreak. There was vomiting, I believe,
trouble walking. Um, there was fever that's weird, nausea and
so the the people running this boarding school like, um,
(03:38):
what's going on? This is not good? Uh? And they
had no idea. The girls went on Christmas break for
ten days, came back, and the thing just took off
again like wildfire. Yeah, six d girls, um showed these
symptoms and nobody could figure it out. Um. They did
a lot of tests, they brought in people to like
check out the facilities, and because as you'll see, there's
(04:01):
a trend there. Um, you know here in the West,
they start to blame it, usually on um, like environmental
poisoning of some kind. Right, Um, you know there's some
sort of toxins that is poisoned everybody. But they didn't
find anything there, and eventually, um, they said, this is uh,
what do you call it? Psychosomatic mass psychogenic disorder? Okay,
(04:25):
mass psychogenic disorder, but no, that is one of the
one of the names that it's mass psychogenic disorder, collective hysteria,
mass hysteria, or mass psychosomatic reaction. They're all saying the
same thing they are, which is you're not well. Was
about so you're not really sick, But that is not
exactly true, because that's one thing that differentiates this from
(04:45):
something that's just in your head is you actually do
manifest physical symptoms. Right. Yeah, there's this article written by
a m d. Named Timothy F. Jones from the Tennessee
Department of Health way back in the heavy days of
two thousand, your two thousand in the future. Um, and
he writes that you if you are experiencing mass psychogenic disorder,
(05:07):
it is not just in your head. That the symptoms
that you have are actually very real. Even though there's
no toxic cause that they couldn't find some sort of
environmental poison or anything like that, the symptoms are extremely real. Yeah,
it's just psycho somatic. It's just basically the brain has
been tricked into causing this response. Yeah, and this has happened. Um,
(05:30):
They've documented about eighty cases throughout history and apparently the
National Institutes of Health gets about two cases per week reported.
But um, which is I mean, like that's that's way
more common than than you would think, you know, yeah,
I would think there'd be more than eight, because I mean,
these have happened. If you go back and look at
I mean, there's all sorts of crazy lists on the
(05:51):
internet about these cases that date back to like the
fourteenth century. Medieval dancing mania was one of them. Yeah,
the dancing plague. Yeah, yeah, that's in there. The Salem
Witchcraft trials or the Salem witchcraft I guess what led
to the trials was UM supposedly attributed to this kind
of thing. Uh. One weird thing about this condition is
(06:17):
more times than not, it is affects females, Yeah, and
young females even more specifically teenagers or even younger, which
is as far as it goes right now, inexplicable UM.
And it's kind of a prickly issue, you know, like
again you kind of come back to the idea of
calling it hysteria. You know, the fact that it does
(06:38):
tend to afflict women or girls more than them boys.
UM is apparently one means of diagnosing psychogenic disordered mass psychogogical.
That's like one of the first things we'll say is like,
all this the sickness is happening in this place, the
school wherever, and the doctor will say, is it a
bunch of girls? And then that will clue them in
(07:00):
that hey, this might be what we're dealing with here.
And but the problem is no one has any idea why,
and there have been explanations of things like um, Uh,
I guess girls, this is this is girls culturally acceptable
outlet for raging against the patriarchy. Sure, even if they
(07:20):
don't necessarily feel that that's what they're doing. This is
there there, Uh, this is the symptoms of that. That's one. Yeah,
I thought this was a pretty interesting part. What article
was that from Slate? Uh? There was uh yeah, one
called mass Asteria and Upstate New York by Ruth Graham
was on Slate. That was a good one. It was
a really good one. And we'll get to that case
in a sect. But um, I thought it was pretty interesting.
(07:43):
In one part, it says, um, and this is a
quote from someone writing about something and said inform, if
not unconscious intent, it is to protest the sexual repressiveness,
rigid double standard of female team culture. Um. But they
were writing about Beatlemania, Yeah, which is interesting because it's
sort of has a similar vibe of uh, young ladies
(08:05):
being repressed, um, not having an outlet, and so they
see the Beatles and they go berserk and faint and
cry and scream collectively. Whereas boys they're more prone to
just act out if they're not feeling good. Girls are
trained to keep things inward. And they also point out
that ladies and young ladies are more prone to seek
(08:25):
a doctor's help for something. Uh, they say that may
account for the bias right there, like guys just won't
go to the doctor exactly. You have to be careful though,
and in just diagnosing MATHS psychogenital disorder, you physicians out
there who are listening to encounter a case like this
UM it just by basing it on the fact that
it is affecting more girls than boys. Because there's at
(08:47):
least one case in Great Britain where I think girls
were afflicted by more than half more than double the
number of girls were afflicted by this, and it turned
out that they were retaining cucumbers being served in the
lunch room. Yeah, and everyone knows boys hate cucumbers, and
so I mean they didn't need anyone, right. But this
is one of the issues with dealing with UM MATHS
(09:09):
psychogenic disorder, and that it looks and acts a lot
like some sort of weird epidemic. That basically it looks
like either a UM something like bioterrorism, uh, rapidly spreading
affection infection or affection if lemania and then acute toxic exposure.
(09:31):
That's what it looks like. It's like one person gets sick.
This is your index case and all of a sudden,
everyone around them suddenly has the same symptoms. Yeah, and
it's like you said, it's super dangerous to just dismiss
that as oh it's all in your head, silly little ladies.
You can't do that because what if it is something
for real? But it's also a double edged sword, is
(09:54):
that doctor pointed out, Um, you start ordering batteries of
tests and it it It can go both ways. It
can Um. What the old saying is, if you order
enough tests, you're gonna find something, so it can fuel
that fire. But you also can't not run any tests
and just dismiss it. Uh. So it's a very fine
line that physicians walk when dealing with stuff like this,
(10:16):
for sure. Indeed, apparently UM study of mass psychogenic disorder
has found that it's more prevalent in isolated communities and
in situations where um, they are highly rigid, formalized, structured rules,
like a Catholic school in Mexico exactly, um or again
(10:38):
um Salem, Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, you know. Um.
And apparently, between nineteen seventy three and half of all
the outbreaks of psychogenetic or psychogenic illness took place in schools,
so that that's possibly in part by due to kids
(11:02):
being susceptible to it more um, but also because of
that that rigid, formalized structure. Yeah. And there's also usually
a top down effect, like it'll start with a teacher
or an older student, and then the younger students follow suit,
which if you're talking influence, would make sense for sure.
There was one very famous case. Um. Apparently there's not
(11:25):
very many actual academic studies on this, but there's one
that came out of the New England Journal of Medicine
UM that that described a case in Tennessee where a
teacher noticed, um, some weird gas odor, a gassy odor, uh,
(11:45):
like the chemical kind. Yeah, not like the guy on
the front road to right exactly, um, and she apparently
started suffering symptoms uh, And all of a sudden, like
a hundred and eighties students and teachers had to go
to the emergency room. The school was shut down for
two weeks. They did all this environmental testing, couldn't find anything,
(12:07):
and finally traced it back to UM psychogenic a mass
psychogenic disorder, if that's what it didn't and then everyone
In most of these cases we should point out everyone
it starts feeling better. Yes, like in Mexico and then
the school in Tennessee. It's it's not like they went
on to die or anything. Yeah. So in the school
(12:28):
in Mexico, the these girls were at a boarding school.
They were only allowed to see their parents, I think
like three times a year. Yeah, they couldn't even call.
It's like it sounds more like a prison. They were
allowed letters when they went home. Immediately their symptoms cleared up.
The problem is that doesn't automatically say oh, well, it's
obviously mass psychogenic distorder. It could be an environmental toxin
(12:51):
that they were being exposed to still uh at the
school and we're removed from But I think the the
definite problem osis is mass psychogenic disorder in this case.
That's right. What we're talking about is a sort of
version of the no Seebo effect, which we've talked about before,
and we will get into that right up to this break.
(13:14):
So the no cebo effect, we talked about that, and
what the placebo effect. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, I
was trying to be more clever. I thought we were
more clever than that. Uh no cebo. I think we
said in that other podcast he was Latin for eyeshall harm.
And that's basically whereas you take a placebo thinking it's
gonna help you out, and it does help you out
(13:37):
because the mind is powerful. The no cebo effect is
thinking something bad will result, like my teachers getting sick.
I think I feel a little sick too, and then oh, hey,
my neighbor is feeling a little sick. I think I'm
feeling a little sick too. Or this this drug trial
that I'm on, I was told that I could possibly
get some sort of gastro intestin old distress. Yeah, and
(13:59):
even I've been given a sugar pill. I'm now going
yeah because in my mind because of the Noebo effect.
There was a famous experiment or case from eight six
where there was a woman who had a rose allergy
and they showed her an artificial rose and she began
to I guess it was convincing, and she began to
(14:20):
have her allergic reaction and they said, ah, ha, it's
fake and you're faking, and uh she said, oh, well,
I think I'm feeling better now, and supposedly that cured
or of her real allergy to real roses. I couldn't
find a lot to back that up. But is it
it is a story. Yeah, well no, that's a I
(14:42):
mean it was in I can't remember the journal, but
it was really well yeah, it was a real deal thing.
And um, I don't I didn't get to the bottom
of why they presented this woman with a fake rose
or whatever, but they definitely didn't. This definitely happened. And um,
the even the author of the study was saying, like
(15:03):
this woman, she wasn't faking. It was like she she
had real symptoms hives or hives exactly. I can see those. Um.
I think they call it like a rose cold or
something like that. You can get you know, stuffy, your
eyes are watering, your your nose is running, that kind
of thing. And what's interesting is some researchers have studied
(15:26):
the no sebo effect and they basically have isolated this
this chemical that gets released when the no cebo effects
going on. And again we should say it's not just
um making your nose running or releasing histamines or anything
like that is pain too, Like you can you can
experience pain even though nothing's there to give you pain,
(15:49):
just because of the noebo effect. What they found was
a um A, I guess, uh hormone, I believe. Are
you ready? I'm gonna try this one? Uh, coli cisto kinon.
That sounds great, thanks man. I haven't looked at the word,
but it sounds right. Coli cisto kinon. Um. Do you
(16:10):
see it now? That's totally right. I totally did. So.
It's a hormone, right, and it gets released and it actually, um,
it helps you experience pain. So it's a nasty little hormone.
But they found in testing with the no cebo effect
that if you block this, you can also block the
no cebo effect. So that proves two things. Does that
(16:30):
block pain though, like your pain receptors? So does that
mean if you slam your pand in the door you
won't feel it if you can block this? Yes? So um,
if you can block coli cisto canon, yes, it will
keep you from um hypersensitivity to pain. I believe. And
this guy named Fabrizio Benedetti I think was also in
(16:51):
the Strokes back. He uh, he was testing out the
nocebo effect and found that if he told people that
he was giving them an injection, which is it's a
pretty cruel test. But effective. These post stop people who
had just come out of surgery. Uh, We're given an
(17:12):
injection and told this injection is going to increase your
pain in thirty minutes. I'm sorry, we have to give
it to it's part of the procedure. He gave some
people an injection of saline and they reported an increase
in pain, and they all went behind the two way
mirror and laughed right there like yeah. And then they
(17:32):
gave somebody, like the other group, the control group, uh,
a chemical an injection that blocks that pain. But they
were told that it was going to increase their pain.
But they were given a chemical that blocks uh cola
sister kinon and the effect didn't take place. They didn't
report an increase in pain even though they were told
(17:52):
they would. Yes, so they So this guy is saying,
like the no cebo effect is real. Like when when
they say it's not just in your head, it's you're
experiencing the same thing as if you were experiencing somebody's
stabbing you. You know, that's when you have to start
asking yourself those deep philosophical questions. Interesting, Um, there's another
(18:16):
case that's have you ever seen the movie Safe The
Todd Haynes movie with Julianne Moore. No, it's from like
the mid nineties, and she played a lady that um
started to have environmental sickness. UM just in the air,
and she's got sort of like increasingly UM crazy as
(18:37):
the movie went on, as far as scrubbing things and
locking herself in her house and making her house a
clean environment. It was good and UM there's there's a
true story though of a lady in London, UM named
Debbie Bird. She's a health spot manager that says that
she's allergic to e m F electromagnetic fields. And it's
(18:59):
an actual thing now you know, there's more than her claiming.
It's called e S electro magnetic sensitivity. Where she has
basically transformed her house. She painted it black. She said
she's allergic to computers, cell phones, microwaves. She had her
house rewired, uh to make it basically e m F free. Uh.
(19:20):
She and her husband's sleep under a silver plated mosquito
net to keep out radio waves and covered all her
windows with protective films. And she said she feel a
lot better now. So I saw that, yes, electromagnetic sensitivity
that if you expose somebody to a an electromagnetic field
and then just tell them that you are, and don't
(19:42):
they have the same reaction, which would suggest that it's
it's no c bow. Well, it's super fascinating because you
see cases like this from that to like gluten sensitivity
becoming a big thing now and people some people contend that, well,
it's maybe a collective hysteria going on. If you think
you're going to be sensitive to gluten, then you're gonna
(20:03):
be sensitive to things that contain gluten. And I'm not
saying that people because that's a very hot topic it is,
but um, some people have claimed that, well, we'll talk
a little bit more about things that exacerbate the mass
psychogenic disorder and the no cebo effect right after this,
(20:29):
so chuck back in two thousand seven, in New Zealand,
UH a drug called el trokes in. It was a
pretty widespread drug in New Zealand. It's a hormone replacement
drug and it was the only one that the government
would pay for. So most people who were on this
hormone replacement therapy, we're using l trokes in. And it
had been that way for like decades. It was just
(20:51):
an established trug Glaxo Smith client hormone replacement Glaxo Smith Klein.
I think just those there's no welcome involved. UM changed,
just the like the outer the inert qualities of it,
like the shape of the pill, the color um, and
I think that's about it. But the the active ingredient
(21:14):
was exactly the same in two thousand seven. Uh. And
when they released it, all of a sudden, some reports
of bad side effects were starting to trickle in, and
the government was like, wait, what's going on here. It
got a little bit of media attention and more reports
started trickling in, and then the media attention grew, and
(21:36):
the reports grew and grew, and apparently the reporting of
adverse effects of el trucks in increased two thousandfold in
a year and a half because of the look of
the bill, because of the look of the pill. They
went back and studied this and they found that in
areas where there was more reporting about these adverse effects
(21:58):
being reported for all trucks in the more adverse effects
were being reported in that area. And that kind of
reveals one of the um risk factors for mass psychogenic
disorder is the media. It's actually spread through the media.
Most easily. Yeah, they have a point though, I mean, um,
I know. In this article too, it points out that
(22:18):
pills that are blue and green are usually associated with drowsiness,
pills that are orange or yellow are not. And I
don't know if that's why they market it that way
or if it's the opposite, as we just see it
that way because of products like niquil and day quill.
But the one that makes you sleepy is green and blue,
and the one that keeps you awake or keep you
(22:38):
awake but doesn't make you drowsy orange. I thought about it.
I think, I mean, what do you associate with like
daytime sunrise? Yellow? Orange? What do you associate with night time?
Like something tranquil like blue? Yeah, Scotch scotch amber. Uh yeah,
I mean you think of That's what I think it
(22:59):
came from. I think the pills came after the association
rather than the other way around. Yeah, I think I even,
like when I get a prescription for something, when I
see the pill, I make a judgment on it before
I've even had it, just by saying, well, don't look
at that thing that Yeah, that's a horse pill or
that's a capsule with you know, powdery stuff inside that's
(23:21):
different than the chalky one. It's you. I think you
just make an association. I don't think I have any
preconceived notions on what a larger pill will do to
me or a capsule will do to me other than
a tablet. But I think it's interesting, though, how you
make these judgment calls but without even thinking about totally.
You know, I mean, like you're you're you probably don't
(23:42):
sit there and look at a pill in your hand.
You just take it and just make some sort of um,
almost unconscious judgments about it. Yeah, it may remind you
another pill that helps you that you're not even remembering exactly,
so that would be placebo. Yeah that's great effect, not great, No,
and it pusses a lot of problems. For instance, there
(24:04):
was a study I think in the nineties that found
that women who believed that they were prone to heart
disease were four times likelier to die of heart disease
than women who didn't believe they are prone to it,
even though they had all the exact same risk factors,
basically the same risk risk factors. There was nothing differentiating
these women aside from a belief that they were going
(24:26):
to die from heart disease or a belief that they weren't,
and that led to a four time fourfold increase in
deaths from that just basically from a belief, is what
it suggests. Yeah, we well, it's sort of like the
I know it's kind of cheesy, but the p M
A the positive mental attitude. I think we've all know
someone who walks around so and so sick. Oh, I
(24:49):
know I'm gonna get it. I just know I'm gonna
get sick, or you know, I just know I'm gonna
get cancer because it runs in my family. That I
think that has an effect on things. I have to agree.
I know some of our more skeptical listeners will are
pulling their hair out right now, but I totally agree
with you. When we did our show in Toronto, on
the way back, you me and I flow out of
(25:09):
Buffalo and I was feeling a little down, but like
at the point where I feel like you can talk
yourself into staying healthy. Positive mental attitude. I guess that's
what you call it. But we were leaving right at
about dusk and the sun was just beaming through the
windows and illuminating every single microbe visible microbe in the air.
(25:33):
I could see them like just going into my nose
in my mouth, and I'm like, I couldn't stop, Like
I couldn't. I was like, I'm not gonna get sick.
I'm not gonna get sick. And man, did I ever
get sick. But I noticed that right when we took off,
and no, you know what it was. Somebody shut one
of their um their window covers shade exactly is the
(25:56):
word that I was looking for. Somebody shut their shade
and I couldn't see anymore, and I immediately started to
feel less symptomatic. Immediately. It was like turning off a light.
And I still got sick, but I was just drowning.
And basically what my brain was interpreting is like being
assaulted by foreign invaders, which I am all the time,
but I normally can't see them. Yeah, well I've done
(26:18):
I do that all the time. When I opened my
uh the curtains in the bedroom and I'll see you
in the morning, I'll see that stuff in the air,
and I'm just thinking, oh, man, that's what I'm walking
around breathing in everything dog hair and cat hair and
Emily hair. So your lungs are just chocked full of it.
So one of the one of the problems this poses
(26:39):
chuck for physicians is that we expect doctors, or we
want doctors to be transparent, to not lie to us. Yeah,
we talked a lot about this lately. I feel like, yeah,
we've talked a lot about diseases. Some of our um
hypochondria listeners have been like, police, stop that talking about
diseason because now I've got more orgal on, I'm gonna
(27:01):
have like some sort of toxic exposure um and then
very soon leprosy spoiler. So, uh, the problem is if
you tell somebody that's going into surgery, hey, by the way, um,
you know you you might have trouble walking, you might
(27:23):
feel nauseous for the next six months, you like, all
this stuff that could be associated with which we demand
from our doctors. It's been shown that if you are
fearful or in despair going into surgery, that's associated with
longer healing times and a higher risk of post operative infection. Right,
So if you have the no cebo effect where doctors
(27:45):
are saying, okay, if I tell somebody, and it's been
proven time after time that in drug trials, people who
are still are given placebo will drop out of drug
trials because they're experiencing these negative side effects even though
they're given the sugar pill. So if you're a doctor
and you you know that you are telling somebody something
(28:07):
that ultimately may end up harming them, and you've sworn
an oath to do no harm, you've got a conundrum
going on right now. And that's what the no cebo
effect poses. It's the problem the no cebo effect poses
for modern physicians, like how much should they tell you
if you're gonna tell somebody that they're gonna feel nauseous
for six months even though they probably won't, should you
(28:29):
tell them and give them a chance to to basically
have the psychosomatic symptom, or tell them they're going to
feel great. Well, that's another one. Somebody says the solution
to this is just frame it differently, Like, don't say
there's a chance you're gonna have um nausea for six months.
Say half of a percent of patients who go through
(28:49):
the same procedure that you're about to go through have
nausea for six months five percent. Don't you're giving them
the same information. It's just framework positively, Yeah, and uh
that one doctor who wrote the article on collective hysteria said, Um,
what he recommends is not naming the illness, said that
can help out. Um, because as soon as you give
(29:12):
something a name, then it just instantly you know you
have something you can call it, and everyone's calling it that,
or the media picks up on it and it's a thing. Yeah,
And that's actually again one of the one of the
risk factors in the spread of mass psychogenic illness is
the larger the response, the emergency medical response to it,
and then hence the larger the media response to it,
(29:34):
the larger the outbreak tends to be. It's called line
of sight exposure. Just knowing somebody is sick or seeing
somebody sick can give you the same symptoms. I'm sure
if you see a news story that all the other
news agencies are running that says, uh, there's been some
weird chemical leak in the air in Atlanta. Uh, people
are gonna start walking around and coughing and saying, I'm
(29:58):
not feeling so good. I have a bitter taste in
my mouth. There's microbes everywhere. Well, here's a case from
that article you sent that I think is super fascinating
the one in upstate New York because it is not
a rash or um a call for nausea, It is
Tourette syndrome. Uh. Sixteen year old UM, young lady named
(30:19):
Laurie Brounwell, Uh what year was this? A couple of
years ago? Yeah, not too long ago, I think um
and Corinth, New York. Um was at her school's homecoming
dance and lost consciousness. Um, this is after she banged
at a concert. Sorry, man, I thought, yeah, she was
head banging at a concert. I wish I knew a
(30:39):
concert that was so me too. I didn't find it anywhere.
Apparently passed out there and had passing outfits. Uh, involuntary
twitching and clapping, started twisting her hair, fluttering her fingers, Hey, hey, hey,
starting stuff like that, and the doctor said, you know
what You've got, Turette syndrome. So Tourette's syndrome is is.
(30:59):
We've had a podcast on It's real and it's not psychosomatic. Um.
But uh, since that time, fourteen other students along with her,
thirteen girls and one boy started exhibiting at Leroy Junior
High School. I'm sorry, Junior Senior High School. Started coming
down with threats, right, which is not contagious, and it
is not contagious at all. Um. Aaron Brockovitch got on
(31:21):
the case, um, famous environmental activists, and she said, now,
I think this has got to do with this train
derailment from nineteen seventy that dumped cyanide all over this town. Um,
and I didn't see where they found any uh legitimate effects. Right. Again,
that's the confounding thing about mass psychogenetic disorders, that it
(31:43):
is still possible that there is some weird toxin in
the environment that is causing this. Like maybe there was
exposure to cyanide that gotten these people's brains and all
gave them to it. And if you stand back and
look at it, you're like, to Turette syndrome isn't contagious.
That doesn't mean that you can't all come down with
(32:05):
Thurette syndrome from exposure to a toxin. It's just still
it's this X factor that's out there that you can't
just necessarily rule out. Yeah, and I believe in that
case too, the UM those fourteen students didn't end up
with Thurette syndrome. That was a good episode Man, I
love Turette syndrome one. Yeah, it's an oldie, oldie, but
a goody and it all came from head banging. That's
(32:28):
how it started at a Nickelback show. Yeah, because Corinth
is near Canada. Canada isn't let nickel Back out any longer?
Are they caged in there? Nice? Uh? There's another case
of the Toxic Lady. Did you hear this one? In Riverside, California,
woman named Gloria Ramirez. Um. Yeah, she was dubbed the
(32:49):
toxic Lady in n She had cervical cancer and was
being treated and all the medical staff started to get
sick that was treating her. Um. This sounds gross, but
they say her body exuded a garlicky fruity smell and
her blood had flecks of what looked like paper um,
which sounds called Morglon's actually nice, you like that um.
(33:12):
And they said that most of the people that got
sick while treating her were women, more women than men,
and they all took blood test and came back normal
and the health department said mass hysteria. So that's funny.
Because I looked, I remembered that story and I was like,
I wonder if that was mass hysteria, and I looked
it up and I found that No, it was an
environmental toxic O it was. That's what I found. So
(33:34):
they called it mass hysteria the time, and then later
found out, I think like a year or two later,
she was using some sort of salve or something on
her skin and they think that in interactive with her
biochemistry and really did produce toxic toxic gas. She said
it maybe this fruit garlic salv exactly. That's interacting badly
with my pancreas. Oh well, uh, this list needs to
(33:57):
be updated. That that That is a fascinating in case
people got really sick from that. I think I remember
hearing about that too. Yeah. Well, I'm glad they found
a real cause in that case from what I understand.
But that's that's that's the point. Like you can say, well,
obviously there's women were more affective than men, right, Well,
is that because there's more women in the nursing profession
(34:18):
and there were more nurses in the room. There's a
lot of different things you have to take into account
before you just write it off. Sometimes it is reel
like sick building syndrome. Yeah, that's a tough one because
after the Opeque oil embargo, apparently people started designing buildings
to be more air tight, so your ventilation ventilation system
(34:39):
was really important, and these buildings have an age necessarily
very well, so the ventilation system is not doing what
it's supposed to any longer, and so they think possibly
that's leading to what we know as sick building syndrome,
which is malaise when you don't feel good when you
go to work. But some studies have found like, no,
that is the better predictor of sick building syndrome is
(35:02):
job stress or job dissatisfaction. Um, if you have a
building full of people who don't like their jobs, you're
gonna have a building full of people with sick building syndrome.
But if you go on to say like a local
government's website or whatever, and you look at sick building syndrome,
it's a it's treated as a real thing. Yeah, well,
it definitely affects your gastro intestinal like stress does. We
(35:23):
also apparently you can set off bouts of asthma um,
which is another reason why they think you might have
something to do with like volatile organic compounds in the
ventilation system or new carpeting, that kind of stuff offcasting. Man,
you you smell that stuff when you open up a
new product. Right. There's also the dancing plague, which we
mentioned briefly. Tell me about it. Uh, Fraul Trophia July
(35:47):
fourteen eighteen, went out on the streets of Strasbourg, France
and started dancing even though there was no music, and
dancing like a maniac for three straight days, and all
these people started dancing with her, saying this is a
good time. Um said, within a month, a hundred people
were dancing with her and couldn't stop and hyperventilating, hallucinating.
(36:09):
Some drop dead of heart attack and stroke and exhaustion.
And the authority said, let's just hire a band and
let him dance it out, because they've got the hot blood,
is what they called it. And so they did, and UM,
a lot of people died as a result, and it
said four hundred people in the end were struck. Uh.
(36:29):
I don't think they died, but we're dancers. And then
it just stopped. And that's when they blame a lot
of people blame on ergot poisoning, which we've mentioned before.
Got poisoning. Those people were clearly tripping on something, they
got the hot blood. But what it sounds like you
just described is basically how Tom Hanks invented jogging in
the seventies. Yogging. Yeah, they just started running and people
(36:52):
started following. I wish that part had been cut out
of that movie. Yeah, I thought that it was a
weird thing that should have been on the editing room floor.
They really kind of derailed things for a while for me.
I don't think that movie's age well though. Uh. Other
people say though that it was Sydenham's Korea disorder linked
(37:15):
to strep throughout in rheumatic fever that causes dance like
twitches um. And then of course modern medical historians say
it was mass psychosis. I would go with that one, yeah,
I mean back then it made more sense though, when
during the Salem witch trials and before they knew anything
about medicine, and you could just say you got the
hot blood or you're having the fits, like yeah, exactly.
(37:38):
These modern cases the ones that really freaked me out
because so much as explainable. Now here's the thing that chuck.
We've always explained. It was something that comes easily to mind.
So back in the day before science and medicine. It
was the devil possessing you. And don't think that people
weren't freaked out when they thought that the devil was
there and possessing people in the same way that you know,
(38:01):
you're freaked out by the idea that it's cyanide in
the soil from a train derailment, from just exactly, which
is the deadliest of all the manias. But it's just
as real to the experiencer. And it all comes down
to people just basically being stick of the establishment and
letting loose for a while. I don't want to go
(38:22):
to work nice, so I'll dance. Have you got anything else? Uh?
If you want to know more about collective hysteria, which
is the name of this article, type those words in
the search bar at how stuff works dot com and
it will bring it up. And I said, search bars
means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this
(38:43):
UM episode on grief. We've got a lot of great
feedback and that continue. Uh, they continue to roll in. Hey, guys,
just dumbled upon your podcast through my tune in radio app.
I guess that's a mini plug We're available there now. Um,
I've devoured all all of the six hundred plus shows
and maybe a new listener. But I'm already a lifelong fan.
(39:05):
So why I'm writing in guys is I lost my
twin sister back in two thousand ten. It was a
rough time because as a fraternal twin me being the boy,
I looked at her not only as a sister, but
as a mother and friend. Too, long story short, I
wanted to comment on the Grief show some time ago.
I've dealt with my grief through my artwork. I'm a
small town artist from Johnson City, Tennessee, and I rarely
(39:27):
can get noticed or any attention with my art. I
wanted to share my new piece I've just finished after
listening to how comic books work. I'm a huge fan
of Marvel comics and I hope you both enjoy this.
And he sent this really cool. I think it was
like every member of the Marvel universe had to be
in this picture that he did. I didn't see that.
It's really really neat, just jam packed full of Marvel
comic heroes and villains. Um So, Josh and Chuck, thanks
(39:50):
for the inspiration, laughs and getting through every day at
the office. PS. My twin Jessica passed away from epilepsy
actually a condition called sue dep sudden unexplained death of epilepsy.
My mother is trying to raise awareness because November is
Epilepsy Awareness Month. So if you guys wouldn't mind mentioning
this on the show, she would be so happy for that. Also,
(40:11):
an epilepsy show would be cool too. Um. Not a
lot is discussed about it, and that is Jason Flack.
And Jason wrote you back that is heartbreaking about your
twin sister. Very sorry to hear that, um, And we
will definitely do a show on epilepsy. And since this
is November though, people should go out and find out
what they can during National Epilepsy Month. We'll follow up
(40:34):
with the show. I don't know if it'll be in November,
but we'll get to that one for sure. And thanks
for that piece of art. And if anyone is interested
in a great comic book artist from Johnson City, Tennessee,
if a lot worse than Jason Flack. Jason, thank you
very much for sharing that with everybody. That means a
lot to us. If you want to share with us
and all of our listeners out there, you can tweet
(40:56):
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email with attached artwork to
stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com and has
always joined us at our home on the web, stuff
you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
(41:18):
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com
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