And such indeed they were. Sudden outcries, hysteric weeping and laughter, faintings, catalepsies, trances, were customary concomitants of the revival preaching. Multitudes fell prostrate on the ground, "spiritually slain," as it was said. Lest the helpless bodies should be trampled on by the surging crowd, they were taken up and laid in rows on the floor of the neighboring meeting-house. "Some lay quiet, unable to move or speak. Some talked, but could not move. Some beat the floor with their heels. Some, shrieking in agony, bounded about, it is said, like a live fish out of water. Many lay down and rolled over and over for hours at a time. Others rushed wildly over the stumps and benches, and then plunged, shouting 'Lost! Lost!' into the forest." As the revival went on and the camp-meeting grew to be a custom and an institution, this nervous epidemic took on certain recognizable forms, one of which was known as "the jerks." This malady "began in the head and spread rapidly to the feet. The head would be thrown from side to side so swiftly that the features would be blotted out and the hair made to snap. When the body was affected the sufferer was hurled over hindrances that came in his way, and finally dashed on the ground, to bounce about like a ball." The eccentric Lorenzo Dow, whose freaks of eloquence and humor are remembered by many now living, speaks from his own observation on the subject: "I have passed a meeting-house where I observed the undergrowth had been cut for a camp-meeting, and from fifty to a hundred saplings were left breast-high on purpose for persons who were 'jerked' to hold on to. I observed where they had held on they had kicked up the earth as a horse stamping flies.... I believe it does not affect those naturalists who wish to get it to philosophize about it; and rarely those who are the most pious; but the lukewarm, lazy professor is subject to it. The wicked fear it and are subject to it; but the persecutors are more subject to it than any, and they have sometimes cursed and sworn and damned it while jerking."[240:1]