St.
Clare was sent for from Preston; before he arrived three more were
seized, and during that night and the morning of the 19th, eleven
more, making in all twenty-four. Of these, twenty-one were young
women, two were girls of about ten years of age, and one man, who
had been much fatigued with holding the girls. Three of the
number lived about two miles from the place where the disorder
first broke out, and three at another factory at Clitheroe, about
five miles distant, which last and two more were infected entirely
from report, not having seen the other patients, but, like them
and the rest of the country, strongly impressed with the idea of
the plague being caught from the cotton. The symptoms were
anxiety, strangulation, and very strong convulsions; and these
were so violent as to last without any intermission from a quarter
of an hour to twenty-four hours, and to require four or five
persons to prevent the patients from tearing their hair and
dashing their heads against the floor or walls. Dr. St. Clare had
taken with him a portable electrical machine, and by electric
shocks the patients were universally relieved without exception.
As soon as the patients and the country were assured that the
complaint was merely nervous, easily cured, and not introduced by
the cotton, no fresh person was affected.
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