Those affected complained more or less of debility after the attacks, and cases sometimes occurred in which they passed into other disorders; thus some fell into a state of melancholy, which, however, in consequence of their religious ecstasy, was distinguished by the absence of fear and despair; and in one patient inflammation of the brain is said to have taken place.
No sex or age was exempt from this epidemic malady.

Children five years old and octogenarians were alike affected by it, and even men of the most powerful frame were subject to its influence.

Girls and young women, however, were its most frequent victims.
4.

For the last hundred years a nervous affection of a perfectly similar kind has existed in the Shetland Islands, which furnishes a striking example, perhaps the only one now existing, of the very lasting propagation by sympathy of this species of disorders.

The origin of the malady was very insignificant.