I suggested that this could be a textbook case of mass hysteria but could understand the authorities had to take a precautionary approach, just in case.
Sure enough, it turned out the most likely cause of 50 children vomiting, feeling dizzy, suffering headaches and others feeling unwell and being hospitalised briefly was a cubic metre of compost delivered to a neighbouring property, potentially opening up a whole new area of chemical warfare.
The mushroom compost was a bit fresh and still cooking so fairly pungent. It emitted a sulphur smell.
The incident reminded me of the time when Auckland had to be sprayed for an insect incursion, the painted apple moth from memory, and, of course, there was a great deal of opposition leading up to the campaign.
Finally, the plane flew over with its first load and resulted in large numbers of folk reporting all sorts of symptoms including some quite serious reactions.
The trouble was the first flights were water only because they were test runs.
When mass hysteria leads to actual illness it is called mass psychogenic illness (MPI). It differs from other collective delusions in that the symptoms of the disease have no organic cause.
There have been some great examples of MPI through history.
The Middle Ages saw several outbreaks of dancing mania where large groups would go at it sometimes for weeks. Often participants would howl, strip, make obscene gestures and laugh and cry to the point of death. I’d pay good money to watch this carry-on.
Young female nuns seemed to be particularly affected and the priest was called to exorcise the supposed demons. However, the deprivation and tough discipline these young girls underwent was the likely trigger.
The Dancing Plague of 1518 in Strasbourg was a decent case where 400 people were affected and many danced themselves to death.
However, an alternative theory to an hysterical outbreak is that their grain had an ergot fungus in it and it produced something like LSD, so that might have been the original Woodstock.
Once the industrial revolution took place, outbreaks of MPI occurred in factories throughout all industrialised countries, likely brought about from poor conditions and stress.
A well-documented case that came to be called the June Bug outbreak happened in the southern United States in June 1962 in a dressmaking factory. Sixty-two people, 59 of them women, quickly came to believe they had been bitten by bugs and developed severe nausea and their skin broke out.
No bugs or bite marks were discovered but all those afflicted were under a lot of strain at the time.
One of my favourites is the Tanganyika laughter epidemic also in 1962 but in Tanzania and affecting school children.
It started with just three girls in one school but spread throughout a region. In the end 14 schools had to be shut and 1000 children were affected. It lasted up to two weeks in some individuals. Symptoms, as well as the laughing, included pain, fainting, flatulence, respiratory problems, rashes, attacks of crying and random screaming.
It is now known intense media coverage is not helpful and tends to exacerbate an outbreak of MPI.
Enough said.
