Fear Of Shrinking Penises And Other Forms Of Mass Hysteria

Posting Date: 06/25/1999

Mass sociogenic illness (MSI) has a long history that I document in my book, "Eat, Drink and Be Merry," and one of the weirdest examples is hysteria created over the fear of shrinking penises.

Of course, penises don?t actually shrink, but there are outbreaks of the phenomenon reported in historical accounts of Africans, Jews, Canadians, Americans, English, Greeks, and especially among Southeast Asians and Chinese.

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With shrinking penis syndrome, or koro, the victim panics in the belief that his penis is shrinking into his abdomen and he will die. Some communities went hysterical and tried various remedies to prevent the penis from shrinking.

One remedy involved tying a rope to the penis and leading the man around the village. All that resulted, of course, were rope burns and injured penises.

An outbreak of the syndrome in Singapore was blamed on eating pork from pigs innoculated with anti-swine fever vaccine. A later study showed the number of cases correlated closely with the intensity of media reports.

In Ghana, crowds beat 12 supposed sorcerers to death who were believed to have made men?s penises shrink. A riot ensued until doctors went on television to explain how penises naturally expand and contract.

MSI also occurred over a musical instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin. He is credited with making a glass harmonica using different sized crystal bowls. The sound from this instrument is similar to what you hear if you rub your finger over the rim of a crystal champagne glass.

Anyway, Mozart enjoyed the sound and even wrote a short adagio for glass harmonica. The eerie sound enjoyed a certain popularity until it was claimed in the early 1800s that it made women faint and become sterile and caused dogs to foam at the mouth. Some believe that it even woke the dead. By 1839 most of Europe banned the glass harmonica ? a victim of MSI.

If you want to know more, go buy my book.