Account of a Fainting Epidemic in a High School

A number of studies have been reported in the literature on epidemics of tremor, jumping, spasmodic coughing, hysterical convulsions, fainting, and similar disorders. Burnham has reported the results of a survey of such epidemics in The Normal Mind.1 The studies surveyed were made for the most part during the last decade of the nineteenth century and are to be found largely in the German literature. Because of the infrequency with which school epidemics have been reported in recent years and their unique nature when they occur, the writer wishes to describe some of the major features of one such epidemic. The increasing growth of personnel service in the high school further justifies a report of the incident as a matter of record and as an example of an oc-