Word: hysterias
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...North Carolina-Virginia epidemic of infantile paralysis last week threatened to stir up an epidemic of hysteria. Dr. Martha Edith MacBride-Dexter, Pennsylvania's Secretary of Health, persuaded Governor Earle to persuade Secretary of War Dern to forbid the mobilization of Virginia and District of Columbia National Guardsmen for summer maneuvers in Pennsylvania. Virginia and District of Columbia troops therefore played war in their own backyards...
Surgeon General Hugh Smith Cumming of the U. S. Public Health Service braced himself against hysteria, cried: "In more than one area this year physicians have been reporting as infantile paralysis questionable and mild cases of infection in order to be on the safe side. Thus the figures as reported are not comparable with those of other years in such places. There is also a moderate increase in the number of true cases reported in several areas without any threat of a real epidemic or any direct connection with the Southern epidemic...
...Almost everybody now is afraid. This is reflected in the hysteria of certain organs of opinion, which insist on free speech for themselves, though nobody has thought of taking it away from them, and at the same time demand that it be denied everybody else. It is reflected in the re-turn of Billingsgate to politics. It is reflected in the general resistance to all uncomfortable truths. It is reflected in the decay of the national reason. Almost the last question you can ask about any proposal nowadays is whether it is wise, just, or reasonable. The question...
...intelligent people could be as wise before the fact as after it, few of them would be fooled into war hysteria. Many an intelligent oldster now feels less than proud, remembering the rabid slaverings of himself and the rest of the pack during the hue & cry of the World War. But in 20 years the world-at-large has forgotten how mad it was. Last week those who still had eyes to see and ears to hear were treated to the most dispassionate analysis yet rendered of how and why the U. S. was gradually sucked into Europe...
...Hysteria. A hysterical person may show every physical sign of every disease that ever afflicted mankind. A hysterical virgin may swell up as if she is about to bear a baby. A hysterical man's hand may shrivel as if palsied. Amnesia is a form of hysteria...