In 1740 an extraordinary sect, known as the “Jumpers,” arose in Wales. According to the description given by Wesley, their exercises were not unlike those of certain frenzied states among the Indians. “After the preaching was over,” Wesley[164] wrote, “anyone who pleased gave out a verse of a hymn; and this they sung over and over again, with all their might and main, thirty or forty times, till some of them worked themselves into a sort of drunkenness or madness; they were then violently agitated, and leaped up and down in all manner of postures, frequently for hours together.” There were sometimes thousands at a single meeting of the Jumpers, shouting out their excitement and ready to leap for joy.[165] Wesley has also described instances of tremendous emotional outburst at Methodist meetings which he addressed. “Some were torn with a kind of convulsive motion in every part of their bodies, and that so violently that often four or five persons could not hold one of them. I have seen many hysterical or epileptic fits,” he wrote, “but none of them were like these in many respects.” Among the dervishes[166] likewise the dance is accompanied by intense excitement and apparently tireless movements. “The cries of ‘Yâ Allah!’ are increased doubly, as also those of ‘Yâ Hoo!’ with frightful howlings shrieked by the dervishes together in the dance.”... “There was no regularity in their dancing, but each seemed to be performing the antics of a madman; now moving his body up and down; the next moment turning round, then using odd gesticulations with his arms, next jumping, and sometimes screaming.”... “At the moment when they would seem to stop from sheer exhaustion the sheikh makes a point of exciting them to new efforts by walking through their midst, making also himself most violent movements. He is next replaced by two elders, who double the quickness of the step and the agitation of the body; they even straighten themselves up from time to time, and excite the envy or emulation of others in their astonishing efforts to continue the dance until their strength is entirely exhausted.” Such is the frenzy thus developed that the performers may be subjected to severe pain, yet only show signs of elation. In all these dances the two most marked features are the intense excitement of those who engage in them and the very remarkable physical endurance which they manifest. Although there is no direct evidence, such as was obtained in examining the football players, that bodily changes favorable to great neuro-muscular exertion are developed in these furies of fanaticism, it is highly probable that they are so developed, and that the feats of fortitude which are performed are to a large extent explicable on the basis of a “tapping of the reservoirs of power” through the emotional excitement. The Fierce Emotions and Struggles of Battle