Nautilus

Why Does Mass Hysteria Affect Mostly Women?

Stage actress Sarah Bernhardt in a scene from an unnamed theatre production. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In 2012, in Le Roy, New York, four cheerleaders developed Tourette’s-like symptoms, which eventually spread to 13 others. In 2011, nearly 2,000 female factory workers fainted on the job in factories throughout Cambodia. In 1962, laughing fits took over half the population of an all-girls school in a village in East Africa. In 1560 in a convent in Xante, Spain, a group of nuns fell to the ground, tore off their veils and began to bleat like sheep.

In each of these episodes, no organic or toxic And they all involved women.

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