, accidentally slipped and
fell hard on the deck; without having been touched by the captain, the
steward instantly clapped his bands and shouted, and then, in
powerless imitation, he too fell as hard and almost precisely in the
same manner and position as the captain. In speaking of the steward's
disorder, the captain of the general staff stated that it was not
uncommon in Siberia; that he had seen a number of cases of it, and
that it was commonest about Yakutsk, where the winter cold is extreme.
Both sexes were subject to it, but men much less than women. It was
known to Russians by the name of 'miryachit'".

So far as I am aware--and I have looked carefully through several
books of travel in Siberia--no account of this curious disease has
been hitherto published.

The description given by the naval officers at once, however, brings
to mind the remarks made by the late Dr. George M. Beard, before the
meeting of the American Neurological Association in 1880, relative to
the "Jumpers" or "Jumping Frenchmen" of Maine and northern New
Hampshire.[3]

[Footnote 3: "Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases," vol. vii.,
1880, p. 487.]

In June, 1880, Dr. Beard visited Moosehead Lake, found the "Jumpers,"
and experimented with them. He ascertained that whatever order was
given them was at once obeyed. Thus, one of the jumpers who was
sitting in a chair with a knife in his hand was told to throw it, and
he threw it quickly, so that it stuck in a beam opposite; at the same
time he repeated the order to throw it with a cry of alarm not unlike
that of hysteria or epilepsy. He also threw away his pipe, which he
was filling with tobacco, when he was slapped upon the shoulder. Two
jumpers standing near each other were told to strike, and they struck
each other very forcibly. One jumper, when standing by a window, was
suddenly commanded by a person on the other side of the window to
jump, and he jumped up half a foot from the floor, repeating the
order. When the commands are uttered in a quick, loud voice, the
jumper repeats the order. When told to strike he strikes, when told to
throw he throws whatever he may happen to have in his hand. Dr. Beard
tried this power of repetition with the first part of the first line
of Virgil's "AEneid" and the first part of the first line of Homer's
"Iliad," and out-of-the-way words of the English language with which
the jumper could not be familiar, and he repeated or echoed the sound
of t