"SOBBING SICKNESS:'

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 140, 13 June 1919, Page 9

"SOBBING SICKNESS:'

A DISEASE OF WAR. PREVALENT IX THE ZONE. Newspaper correspondent? now in Europe have furnished much interesting information as to the effect of war on the physical and mental states of the people in general, not only in Germany and' Austria, but in Russia and other countries which have felt the iron lieel ot war. In their mass movements these People have reacted exactly as history Aas taught us they would. Some of these newspaper men have discovered a new disease—or. more accurately, have discovered a new name for what has appeared among masses of people many times during the world's written history, and which is always found in isolated individuals of unstable, nervous temperament. They have called it "sobbing sickness.'* a catchy name to remember but one of sorrowful. alliteration. It has been described thus: "Both men and women suddenly begin to sob, and very often continue sobbing, even in their 6*eep. Some doctors seem to think this malady is due to unwholesome food, which causes stomach dilatation: others Ettribute it to nervousness alone. In some cases this nervousness has become so acute that people have attacks in the night not unlike an epileptic fit. The sufferer begins by feeling a choking sensation, then cries out. and finally becomes unconscious, very often remaining so for twenty minutes or even half an hour, after which he falls into a deep sleep. Afterward he remembers nothing whatever about what has happened. The result of this sobbing sickness and of these attacks is of course still further to weaken a people already greatly enfeebled."' EASILY IRRITATED. A further effect i- to make persons more irritable than usual. This, symptom was noted many times in the third year of the war. and manifested itself by loss of temper for most trivial causes. Immorality and crime increased. Men and women stop work for little or no reason even when work is available; standing idle by hours, caring little for home and unable to sleep at night. Children refuse to attend school. Now. one lias no difficulty in seeing that while a combination of both mental strain and physical depletion must coexist to produce such profound changes jn the mental equilibrium of people who in ordinary times react to their environment in a rational manner, still, without the physical depletion the effect could not have been produced. On the other hand, that so many people have been similarly afflicted clearly indicates that the suffr-reris have been the victims of suggestion of the same class that obtained in the great religious revivals of the early nineteenth century, when people, overcome by their emotions, would, as described by Peter t'artwright. perioral .ill sort:- of antics, the subjective jnentality gaining tiie ascendency over the higher centres of judgment. From a physician's standpoint, this is nothing more or less than hysteria, of which both men and women may mi O'er, popular behef to the contrary notwithstanding.