Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'

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Mob Hysteria
Throughout history, there have been incidences of neurological and psychiatric symptoms in the masses that have stood out. Most of the incidences have been coupled with jerky movements, nausea, vomiting, thrashing, spasm and screaming. Some have even shown clinical symptoms such as fainting among others. While most of the people have associated the phenomenon with witchcraft, possession or malingering, the medical community remains perplexed (Medscape).
One of the most recent incidences took place in New York, Le Roy, 2012. It involved a boy and 14 girls in their teenage are reported to have started experiencing spasms, vocal tics and twitches. As the causes of the incidents was being debated there were several suggesting that came up, much like it has been the case in the past. Most of the suggestions were ruled out including infections, vaccine exposure or drug use. Some of the environmental activist and legal consultants felt that the incident could have been caused by spillage of toxins dating back to the 1970 train derailment. To most of the neurologists after examining the patients came to the conclusion that it was a psychogenic mass illness (Medscape).
One other incident that took place in San Diego, this recorded one of the highest numbers of patients. It took place in the San Diego barracks where more than 1000 persons were affected. In most of the cases, there are more women than men in the mass hysteria cases that have been reported. In this particular case, all the patients were men. For most of the patients, they experienced coughing and the medical teams treated most of the patients for respiratory arrest and heart attack. The patients that saw the CPR procedure being performed on the other patients also developed the symptoms. What wa...