Articles tagged with "hysteria"

By Robert Bartholomew and Peter Hassall > > Reviewed > > Although this was published six years ago, I think it is a classic reference book that will endure. It is available in some local libraries, including the Auckland public library. > > The previous survey, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” was published a long time ago now. It is a great companion reference for Lynley Hood's analysis “A City Possessed” on the Moral Panic in Christchurch surrounding the Peter Ellis case. > > I learnt several things of great interest to skeptics. For example: > > The moon hoax used pseudo-scientific terms and quoted a defunct journal. It gave a big boost in circulation to newspapers that published it. > > There was a case of anxiety hysteria in Auckland in 1973 about a smell coming from leaking drums in the Parnell wharf. Many people became ill until it was shown the substance in the drums was not poisonous. > > Medics (as in a Canadan case in 2004) can suffer from anxiety hysteria. You'd think their training might make them immune! > > Exorcism and religion can make things worse in cases of hysteria, due to excessive fear of bad spirits - as it strengthens belief in the imaginary causes of these delusions. > > Sometimes harsh conditions can trigger hysteria, and so a 'spirit' can speak out or 'cause' absenteeism from horrible institutions or work-places due to hysterical symptoms.Sometimes conditions improve as a result; whereas the victims in these institutions may not have been successful had they just protested. > > Self-mutilation can be an extreme way to gain attention, and can involve false accusations. > > False confessions are common during public moral panics. > > Sometimes, as with the Peron family case, psychiatric conditions are falsely reinterpreted as paranormal phenomena. > > Finally, skeptics have in some cases managed to help defuse panics by effectively debunking false beliefs. > > Look out for my next review, which will hopefully be on the book NOISE by Daniel Kahneman.

There have been promising results from a recent trial of an HIV vaccine. An effective vaccine would be a useful part of our fight against AIDS related deaths. The new vaccine needs further trials, but in the study showed an 80% immune response, which is much better than previous attempts to create a vaccine. In brief, as I'm sure everyone knows, the HIV virus causes AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - and it's this compromised immune system that can be fatal.

Claire and I have taken a year off to teach English in the Czech Republic. These two photos are our friend Lada indicating the site where Agatha Toott was burned to death 400 years ago.

That was never six months just then -- it felt much longer. Banised to the depths of New Zealand, in Tuatapere (almost as far south west as you can get in the South Island), life took on a gentler pace. Momentous things did happen -- the stoat population declined by 300 around where we were, and the yellowheads had a successful breeding season.

Folie-a-deux can be defined as a paranoid disorder in which the same delusion is shared by two (or more) persons. The delusion is thought to be transmitted from a dominant but paranoid person to his or her dependent intimate(s), and the latter may recover "normal" reality testing after separation from the former.

Another sacred cow from my medical school days has been laid to rest. A letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 triggered a rash of anecdotal reports about facial flushing allegedly caused by monosodium glutamate (MSG) in Chinese food. "Chinese restaurant syndrome" had entered the popular medical mythology. Finally, 26 years later, two Australian scientists conducted a double-blind placebo controlled trial and found that some reaction to MSG was experienced by 15% of the subjects but the same reactions were also experienced by 14% of the placebo subjects. The scientists believe that the true cause of Chinese restaurant syndrome are histamine compounds found in fermented ingredients such as soy sauce, black bean sauce and shrimp paste. New Scientist 15 Jan '94 p15