Word: manias
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...symbol of comfort and repose in every habitant farmhouse, was transformed into a device of frenzy and fatigue in Quebec last week. A wave of rocking-chair contests called bercethons (from the French bercer-to rock) swept the province. Quebec was suffering a virulent recurrence of the marathon mania of the '305, with rockerthons, pianothbns, poolothons and countless other forms of zany endurance tests under way in almost every village and town...
...when the mania exhausted his patience, Quebec's Premier Alexandre Taschereau ordered provincial police to raid the halls where marathons were being held. So far there has been no hint of another crackdown. A few Catholic priests have preached about irreligious berceurs who stick to their rockers and miss Sunday Mass. But Premier Maurice Duplessis, who was at home last week coddling a cold, was reportedly planning no action. "What could Mr. Duplessis say?" asked Solicitor General Antoine Rivard. "He's rocking himself at the moment...
...injections, fed themselves, ate heartily and slept well. Not all patients responded equally well. But among 77 manics, Dr. Lehmann saw no total failures; 27 were somewhat improved, nine improved enough to go home despite some lingering illness, and 37 went home "recovered." In four cases, incipient attacks of mania were averted...
...cynical and bossy, she helps care for a crippled child, tries to manipulate the thinking and affairs of a beautiful nymphomaniac, a black-marketeer, a Protestant minister. Aunt Mathilde, who earns a pathetic living for herself and Constance, is appalled. "A crippled child, and now, a whore! With your mania for rubbing up against humanity, you're apt to force almost anyone on us." Constance drives, insults and cracks the whip over her human menagerie. When her creatures eventually go their own ways, she has nothing left, not even God, "who gets all the credit for our good deeds...
Reece's report attacks a far bigger target than tax-exempt foundations. It looks with a jaundiced eye on the social sciences and at empirical methods of scientific inquiry. It excoriates empiricism as the "fact-finding mania," the "fetish of statistics" and the "comptometer compulsion." It charges that the Kinsey reports (partially financed by the Rockefeller Foundation) are "socially dangerous." The report declares but does not prove: "The research in the social sciences with foundation support slants heavily to the left...