Epidemic Nightmares

The ancient hypothesis of the contagious nature of nightmares, supported for centuries by the sole testimony of a disciple of Hippocrates, was given a new lease of life at the beginning of the 19th century. A military surgeon observes a battalion of eight hundred men suffering the same terrifying nightly vision simultaneously and attempts to explain the fact by evoking a cluster of natural causes. His observations spread out beyond France and triggered a wave of complementary or contradictory interpretations (physiological, psychological, spiritualists…) that keep going until the dawn of the 20th century and intersected with literary fiction.