When Fads Go Amok

Dangerous and fatal fads aren't uncommon among pubescent girls. As the New York Times pointed out in a major story 10 years ago, female puberty can often be pretty rough. In 1692, to cite one well-known example, a group of pubescent girls from Salem, Massachusetts, began suffering fits, contortions and uncontrolled screaming. A doctor bought in by the girls' families quickly came up with a diagnoses of witchcraft. In those days, justice was swift. Nineteen people were promptly hanged and 150 more imprisioned. But residents quickly retuned to their senses as it became clear that people with no belief in witchcraft whatsoever were using the accusation to redress old greviences. Within nine months the hysteria was essentially gone.-----------------Here's another pubescent female fad, this time though it's probably one you probably never heard of. In the middle of the 20th century, the historians Will and Ariel Durant wrote a book on Greek civilzation which mentioned a story from Plutarch about an epidemic of suicide among female pubescents in the Greek town of Miletus in 277 BC. Parents were aghast. The city fathers had no idea what to do until someone came up with the idea of carrying all such suicides naked through the marketplace on the way to the burial grounds. This stopped the suicides overnight. Apparently, the desire for suicide wasn't as strong as the fear of having strangers see you naked. The probelms today, of course, are much different. Many transsexuals today would give their left foot to be seen naked, in the marketplace, or anywhere else.