第2724期:The razor-thin line between contagion and connection(1)

I make audio documentaries, and I recently spent some time in a town called Le Roy, New York. It's a town about 50 miles outside of Buffalo. It's a small town. Its claim to fame is that it's the birthplace of Jell-O.我制作音频纪录片，最近在纽约州一个叫勒罗伊的小镇待了一段时间。这个镇位于布法罗市外约50英里，是个小地方，最出名的是它是果冻（Jell-O）的诞生地。There's a museum and everything.那里甚至有个博物馆，应有尽有。Anyway, in 2011, at the beginning of the school year, something strange happened in Le Roy. A student at Le Roy Junior-Senior High School, a cheerleader, she wakes up from a nap with a stutter, like a severe stammer, trouble speaking. And pretty soon, that turns into head tics and facial twitches, and then blurting out sounds and words. Symptoms that you'd associate with something like Tourette's syndrome.2011年开学季，勒罗伊发生了一件怪事。当地初高中联合学校的一名啦啦队员午睡醒来后突然严重口吃，说话困难。很快，症状演变成头部抽动、面部痉挛，并开始不受控制地发出怪声和词语——类似妥瑞氏症的症状。A couple of weeks later, while she's dealing with that, another student at the school comes down with the same symptoms: tics, spasms, barks, blurting out sounds and words. And it happens from 0 to 60 overnight, out of nowhere. And then it happens to another student. And then two more.几周后，就在她还在应对这些症状时，另一名学生也出现了同样的抽搐、痉挛、怪叫和言语失控。症状一夜之间突然爆发，毫无预兆。接着是第三个、第四个……This is Rose. Rose was in eighth grade at the time of the outbreak. At first it was whispers. It was like, "Oh, it's this one girl. We don't know what's going on, blah blah blah." And the next thing I know, it's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls.这是罗斯，疫情爆发时她正读八年级。起初只是窃窃私语，比如"噢，就是这个女孩，我们也不知道怎么回事"之类的。但很快，患者数量成倍增加，而且全是女生。Jessica was a senior at the time. And I remember thinking, were they making it up? What is going on?杰西卡当时是高三学生。我记得我在想：她们是不是装的？到底发生了什么？People thought they were faking it. Everybody thought they might be faking it. And then my friend came to school the one day, and I was at my locker. And she came up to me and she was stuttering super bad. I'm like, "What are you doing? Stop fucking around. Why are you talking like that?"大家都觉得她们在装病。直到有一天，我在储物柜前遇到朋友，她口吃得厉害。我问："你在干嘛？别闹了，为什么这样说话？"And she's like, "I can't." She's, like, twitching, she's crying at that point, just trying to get out her words, and I'm like, "Holy shit. This is real. What happened?"她却说："我控制不了。"她抽搐着，哭了起来，拼命想说出话。我这才意识到："天啊，这是真的。到底怎么了？"Within weeks, the case count hits double digits. All at the high school. All girls. An investigation begins. They test for Lyme disease. They test for heavy metals in the blood. Back at the school, they test for the water safety. They test for the air quality. They test for mold. And the only thing spreading faster than the contagion are the theories about what's causing it.几周内，病例数突破两位数，全是高中女生。调查随即展开：莱姆病检测、血液重金属检测、学校水质检测、空气质量检测、霉菌检测……而传播得比疫情更快的，是各种病因猜测。I remember hearing at some point, since it was all girls, it must be a bad batch of tampons.我记得有人猜测，既然全是女生，可能是某批卫生棉条有问题。The tampon theory does not pan out. In fact, none of them do. After a month-long investigation, the state and the school board and the and the doctors involved, they come up with what they think is the answer. The outbreak ripping through the high school is a mass psychogenic illness, otherwise known as mass hysteria.卫生棉条理论被推翻，其他猜测也均不成立。经过一个月的调查，州政府、校方和医生们得出结论：这场席卷校园的疫情是"群体性心因性疾病"，即"群体癔症"。Emily was in eighth grade when she came down with the symptoms herself. This is what her doctor told her. Emily: She basically said, "It's all in your head. You're fine." How are you, as a medical professional, going to look your patient in the eye and be like, you're fine. Stop thinking about it. You're fine, you're fine.艾米莉八年级时也出现了症状。她的医生告诉她："这完全是心理作用，你没事。"作为一个医疗专业人士，怎么能看着病人的眼睛说"你没事，别多想"？And she should be skeptical, right? Especially because she's a woman. Even the word hysteria has its roots in the Greek for uterus. For centuries, doctors would blame the wandering womb for all sorts of problems that women were having with their bodies, without really understanding what it was medically.她当然该怀疑——尤其因为她是女性。"癔症"（hysteria）一词本就源于希腊语的"子宫"。几个世纪以来，医生们总把女性身体问题归咎于"子宫游走"，却从未真正理解医学原理。Back in Le Roy, this is how Jessica reacted to the diagnosis. I thought, "That's bullshit. I don't believe that. Seeing all these girls, they're not making it up. I just don't believe that that's the thing. After all of this, that's all it is? I just don't know how to believe that.在勒罗伊，杰西卡对诊断结果的反应是："胡扯！我不信。我亲眼看到那些女孩的痛苦，她们不是装的。经历了这么多，结果就这？我实在无法接受。"I love that. "I don't know how to believe that." Not just "I don't believe that." "I don't know how to believe it." Here's what I have come to believe. I think we all need to start learning how to believe in mass hysteria, because while it is very rare, it is also very real. So say neurologists, psychoanalysts, sociologists, so says the NIH.我喜欢这个说法——"我不知道该怎么相信"，而不仅仅是"我不信"。我的观点是：我们都需要学会接受"群体癔症"的存在，因为它虽罕见，却真实存在。神经学家、心理分析师、社会学家乃至美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）都证实了这点。And it's a very specific type of contagion that says a lot about how we're connected as people. Mass psychogenic illness is the rapid spread of real physical symptoms from one person to the other. But those symptoms don't seem to have any organic cause. So you’ve got a limp, but your x-ray is normal. Or you’ve got neurological symptoms, but your MRI doesn’t show anything. Medically, these symptoms shouldn't be happening. But then they begin to spread from person to person. But it's not random.这是一种特殊的"传染"，深刻揭示了人类的联结方式。群体性心因性疾病会让真实症状快速传播，但这些症状却无器质性病因。比如你跛行，但X光正常；或有神经症状，但MRI无异常。医学上这些症状本不该出现，但它们却开始人际传播——且并非随机发生。