I found myself thinking socologically when i was talking to my grandma about what we were learing in class. I was telling her all about groups, statuses, roles, mass hysteria and panic. I explained to her the difference between mass hysteria and panic and gave her examples that we used in class to describe the differences. It turned out she already knew the difference and had her own story of mass hysteria!
She started to tell me about back in the 1960's before she had my dad she worked in a dress making factory. She said while she was working some women started having strange syptoms like suddenly becoming numb and vomiting! Supposedly it was bug that was going around and many more women started having the symptoms and less and less of them were coming to work. The ones that had the disease said they were sure they got it from the factory. The women that were left including my grandma started seeing word of the illness in the news! My grandma said over 50 people soon claimed to have the bug and even went to the hospital! Everyone that was left was hysterical and praying they wouldn't get bitten by the so called bug. Eventually though, it was found that there was no such thing as the bug and nobody even had bites. Most of those women got the symptoms from the anxiety alone. I thought that was crazy for all those people to think they had a disease when really there was no such thing!
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