Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,
by Charles Mackay, L.L. D.

Published: 2nd Edition, London, Office of the National Illustrated Library,
1852. First published: London, Richard Bentley, 1841.

Note: Due to their lenghts Chapters 4, 9, and 10 are presented in parts.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                MEMOIRS OF
                              EXTRAORDINARY
                            POPULAR DELUSIONS
                            BY CHARLES MACKAY

 AUTHOR OF "THE THAMES AND ITS TRIBUTARIES," "THE HOPE OF THE WORLD," ETC.

              "Il est bon de connaitre les delires de l'esprit
              humain. Chaque peuple a ses folies plus ou moins
                               grossieres."
                                - Millot

                                 LONDON:
                   RICHARD BENTLEY, New Burlington Street
                   PUBLISHER IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY.
                                   1841



CONTENTS:

Preface

Chapter 1. Money Mania.—The Mississippi Scheme

Chapter 2. The South Sea Bubble

Chapter 3. The Tulipomania

Chapter 4. The Alchymists
           Geber, Alfarabi, Avicenna, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas,
           Artephius, Alain de Lisle, Arnold de Villeneuve, Pietro d'Apone,
           Raymond Lulli, Pope John XXII, Jean de Meung, Nicholas Flamel,
           George Ripley Basil Valentine, Bernard of Trèves, Trithemius,
           The Maréchal de Rays, Jacques Cœur, Inferior Adepts of the
           Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Progress of the Infatuation
           During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries—Present State of
           the Science, Augurello, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, George
           Agricola, Denis Zachaire Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly, The
           Cosmopolite, Sendivogius, The Rosicrucians, Jacob Böhmen,
           Mormius, Borri, Inferior Alchymists of the Seventeenth Century,
           Jean Delisle, Albert Aluys, The Count de St. Germain,
           Cagliostro, Present State of Alchymy

Chapter 5. Modern Prophecies

Chapter 6. Fortune-Telling

Chapter 7. The Magnetisers

Chapter 8. Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard

Chapter 9. The Crusades

Chapter 10. The Witch Mania

Chapter 11. The Slow Poisoners

Chapter 12. Haunted Houses

Chapter 13. Popular Follies of Great Cities

Chapter 14. Popular Admiration of Great Thieves

Chapter 15. Duels and Ordeals

Chapter 16. Relics

Notes



PREFACE to the first edition

THE OBJECT OF THE AUTHOR in the following pages has been to
collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics
which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by
another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray,
and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their
infatuations and crimes.

Some of the subjects introduced may be familiar to the reader; but
the Author hopes that sufficient novelty of detail will be found
even in these, to render them acceptable, while they could not be
wholly omitted in justice to the subject of which it was proposed
to treat. The memoirs of the South Sea madness and the Mississippi
delusion are more complete and copious than are to be found
elsewhere; and the same may be said of the history of the Witch
Mania, which contains an account of its terrific progress in
Germany, a part of the subject which has been left comparatively
untouched by Sir Walter Scott, in his "Letters on Demonology and
Witchcraft," the most important that have yet appeared on this
fearful but most interesting subject.

Popular delusions began so early, spread so widely, and have
lasted so long, that instead of two or three volumes, fifty would
scarcely suffice to detail their history. The present may be
considered more of a miscellany of delusions than a history,—a
chapter only in the great and awful book of human folly which yet
remains to be written, and which Porson once jestingly said he
would write in five hundred volumes! Interspersed are sketches of
some lighter matters,—amusing instances of the imitativeness and
wrongheadedness of the people, rather than examples of folly and
delusion.

Religious manias have been purposely excluded as incompatible with
the limits prescribed to the present work;—a mere list of them
would alone be sufficient to occupy a volume.

In another volume should these be favourably received, the Author
will attempt a complete view of the progress of Alchemy and the
philosophical delusions that sprang from it, including the
Rosicrucians of a bygone, and the Magnetisers of the present, era.

London, April 23rd, 1841.



PREFACE to the Edition of 1852

IN READING THE HISTORY OF NATIONS, we find that, like individuals,
they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of
excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We
find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one
object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become
simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till
their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than
the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to
its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory;
another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and
neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of
blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its
posterity. At an early age in the annals of Europe its population
lost their wits about the sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in
frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land; another age went mad for
fear of the devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims
to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many became
crazed on the subject of the philosopher's stone, and committed
follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a
venial offence, in very many countries of Europe, to destroy an
enemy by slow poison. Persons who would have revolted at the idea
of stabbing a man to the heart, drugged his pottage without
scruple. Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion
of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite
fashionable. Some delusions, though notorious to all the world,
have subsisted for ages, flourishing as widely among civilised and
polished nations as among the early barbarians with whom they
originated,—that of duelling, for instance, and the belief in
omens and divination of the future, which seem to defy the
progress of knowledge to eradicate them entirely from the popular
mind. Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of
multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate
gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a
piece of paper. To trace the history of the most prominent of
these delusions is the object of the present pages. Men, it has
been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad
in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by
one.

Some of the subjects introduced may be familiar to the reader; but
the Author hopes that sufficient novelty of detail will be found
even in these, to render them acceptable, while they could not be
wholly omitted in justice to the subject of which it was proposed
to treat. The memoirs of the South-Sea madness and the Mississippi
delusion are more complete and copious than are to be found
elsewhere; and the same may be said of the history of the Witch
Mania, which contains an account of its terrific progress in
Germany, a part of the subject which has been left comparatively
untouched by Sir Walter Scott in his Letters on Demonology and
Witchcraft, the most important that have yet appeared on this
fearful but most interesting subject.

Popular delusions began so early, spread so widely, and have
lasted so long, that instead of two or three volumes, fifty would
scarcely suffice to detail their history. The present may be
considered more of a miscellany of delusions than a history—a
chapter only in the great and awful book of human folly which yet
remains to be written, and which Porson once jestingly said he
would write in five hundred volumes! Interspersed are sketches of
some lighter matters,—amusing instances of the imitativeness and
wrongheadedness of the people, rather than examples of folly and
delusion.

Religious manias have been purposely excluded as incompatible with
the limits prescribed to the present work;—a mere list of them
would alone be sufficient to occupy a volume.