Littell's Living Age/Volume 126/Issue 1628/An Hysterical Fair
AN HYSTERICAL FAIR.
That hysteria plays a more important part in many demonstrations — physical, mental, and spiritual — than is generally supposed, will not be denied, at any rate, by medical men. Those indefinite distresses to which human nature, and especially female human nature, is more or less subjected, and which have borne at different times different names, such as the vapours, the spleen, the megrims, the nerves — and ennui should, perhaps, be added to the list — are nothing but varied forms of hysteria. So, again, great emotional excitements, whether produced by alarm, eagerness, or even religion, may be often traced to the same source. The wild frenzies of Bacchantes on Theban mountains; the restless dancing of Italian girls, said to have been bitten by the tarantula; the fervent jumping of some orders of Methodists; the weeping and contrition at revivals — though we do not deny for a moment that other better or worse causes may be at work simultaneously — have all a physical element of hysteria in them. Hysteria is decidedly common in India; not unfrequently amongst men, and very frequently amongst women. With the latter sex, the wearing climate may be accredited with part of the mischief, but other causes doubtless exist in early marriage, early child-bearing, seclusion, and want of air and exercise; or in the case of women in the humblest walks of life, opposite evils may operate towards the same results — over-work, insufficient nutriment, exposure to heat, etc. The somewhat violent measures occasionally resorted to may not do much harm in simply hysterical cases; but it is painful to think that, with a wholly imperfect diagonis, remedies may be applied to actual insanity which can only tend to greaily aggravate the disease. The belief that persons in a hysterical condition are possessed by evil spirits is universal, and superstitious cures are sought after, though in different ways, by professors of both the great religions of the land — many of the lower Hindoos resorting to magic, which may be considered as applying to the devil, while the Mussulman would seek by charms and sacred exorcisms to drive out the evil spirit.
Generations ago, two fakirs of the Mohammedan order of Kadiree started on a pilgrimage to Baghdad from their own village in North-west India, situated in the district of Jounpore, which lies between Benares and the territory of Oudh. Jhe founder of their sect, Abdul Kadir, is buried at Baghgad, and around his mausoleum the tombs of so many mystical sheikhs have been placed, that Baghdad itself has sometimes being called the "City of the Saints." On their return journey from the shrine, which they are said to have performed backwards, the fakirs brought with them two bricks which had formed part of it, as sacred memorials, and perhaps also as testimony that they had reached the place of their destination. There was a propriety in bringing bricks, because they are associated with Abdul Kadir's fame as a saint; for on one occasion when he was praying the devil appeared to him disguised as an angel of light, and told him that, on account of his great piety, God would henceforth absolve him from the necessity of prayer; but Abdul Kadir was not to be deceived, and without hesitation began hurling bricks at the deceitful visitant, under which treatment he presently disappeared, and the temptation was thus got rid of.
The fakirs deposited the bricks near their own village, and built a cupola over them. The shrine is called Ghouspore, and the bricks are shown to this day, and are objects of veneration.
An annual fair is held at the place, on the day of the death of Abdul Kadir, but as it is fixed by the Mohammedan calendar, and the Mohammedan year is a lunar one, the commemoration goes round through all the seasons. A large concourse of people always assembles, and the speciality of the occasion is the exorcism of evil spirits; in other words, the empirical cure of hysterical persons. Sacrifices are performed before the shrine by Mohammedans; and the Hindoos, who have an Athenian catholicity in their respect for all gods, known or unknown, cast flowers there or offer sweetmeats and fruits. A recent visitor relates as follows: " Around the tomb I saw some hundred women, and perhaps thirty men, with a few children, sitting on the ground, wagging their heads, shivering, weeping, and screaming. Their relatives were waiting on them. Some women had thrown off their ornaments, or had broken them. The friends of other of the women held them by the hair of their head, and called upon them to disclose the name of the demon who possessed them. The afflicted themselves would shout out as if addressing their tormentors, and would ask for what sacrificial inducement, or at what price, they would depart. It was a very wild scene. The custodians of the shrine, who may rightly be called priests, though they do not represent any distinct sacerdotal order, moved about, fumigating the possessed with incense, and accompanied by musicians beating loudly on drums. Sacred exorcisms were pronounced, papers with efficacious formulæ written on them were burnt under the noses of the afflicted, their hair was pulled, or, in obstinate cases, their bodies were well belaboured with drumsticks. The fervour with which one man assisted the exorcists with his private cane, in their endeavours to relieve a female, seemed to indicate the concealed payment of an old domestic score. Such virtue as belonged to the locality itself was said to extend as far as the point to which the beating of the drums could be heard."
A girl named Dulhir, who had recovered from her affection, thus related her experience. "Her demon," she said, "came from a lake named Dal, in Kashmeer, and was travelling southward when he was unlucky enough to meet a person wearing an armlet, on which was inscribed the Holy Name. Fire issued out of the centre, and would have consumed the evil spirit, but he adroitly jumped down a well. The unfortunate girl Dulhir happened to be drawing water at the very time: the demon saw her, and remaining quiet all the day, tracked her home at night. From that moment she was possessed. Her visit to the shrine was, however quite successful. It was lighted at the time, and the effulgence gradually overcame her tyrannnical incumbent, and in the end he left her perfectly free from ailment and distress. Whilst he was departing, however, she lay on the ground, writhing her body, and striking the dusty road with her hands."
A story was told at the place of a woman who had been brought there, whose malady was displayed by her reading Arabic. Even as she sat at the tomb, she contrived to recite, as she perused, passages in a celebrated poem attributed to the pen of Abdul Kadir himself. A sudden voice from within the shrine commanded her to desist, and she returned to her home, cured and illiterate.
It would be a comical sight in this London of ours, if we could have a pen at one of the fancy fairs filled with all the hysterical people: the old ladies who shriek if their parrot has a fit, or their lap-dog is threatened with asthma; the gushing spinsters whose eyes brim with delicious brine, and whose noses instinctively flutter towards the smelling-bottle when their popular preacher dilates on the transcendental poetry of the unseen; the habitual invalids who have their sinkings and their sighings, their nerves and their nips; the hypochondriacs who weigh themselves after eating, analyze their drinking-water, and go to bed when the wind is in the east; the young gentlemen who languish through their lyric verse, drink in the moonlight, talk æsthetical criticism, and go into ecstasies over "the sustained treble of a Limoges plate," or the delicate harmony of "a serenade in blues." Really, perhaps, the drumsticks might be found a salutary remedy for each and all!