Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841 under Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions."
" ... The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, crusades, duels, economic bubbles, fortune-telling, haunted houses, the Drummer of Tedworth, the influence of politics and religion on the shapes of beards and hair, magnetizers (influence of imagination in curing disease), murder through poisoning, prophecies, widespread admiration of great thieves, popular follies of great cities, and relics. Present-day writers on economics, such as Michael Lewis and Andrew Tobias, laud the three chapters on economic bubbles.
In later editions, Mackay added a footnote referencing the Railway Mania of the 1840s as another "popular delusion" that was at least as important as the South Sea Bubble. In the 21st century, the mathematician Andrew Odlyzko pointed out, in a published lecture, that Mackay himself played a role in this economic bubble; as a leader writer in The Glasgow Argus, Mackay wrote on 2 October 1845: "There is no reason whatever to fear a crash."
Volume I: National Delusions
"The first volume ... includes] ... a discussion of Dutch tulip mania of the early seventeenth century. According to Mackay, speculators from all walks of life bought and sold tulip bulbs and even declared futures contracts during this bubble. Allegedly, some tulip bulb varieties briefly became the most expensive objects in the world during 1637."
Volume II: Peculiar Follies
"Mackay describes the history of the Crusades as a kind of mania of the Middle Ages, precipitated by the pilgrimages of Europeans to the Holy Land. Mackay is generally unsympathetic to the Crusaders, whom he compares unfavorably to the superior civilization of Asia: "Mackay describes the history of the Crusades as a kind of mania of the Middle Ages, precipitated by the pilgrimages of Europeans to the Holy Land. Mackay is generally unsympathetic to the Crusaders, whom he compares unfavorably to the superior civilization of Asia: 'Europe expended millions of her treasures, and the blood of two millions of her children; and a handful of quarrelsome knights retained possession of the Kingdom of Jerusalem for about one hundred years!"Europe expended millions of her treasures and the blood of two million of her children; a handful of quarrelsome knights retained possession of the Kingdom of Jerusalem for about one hundred years!'"
Witch mania
" ... Witch trials in the early modern period
Witch trials in 16th- and 17th-century Western Europe are the primary focus of the "Witch Mania" section, which asserts that this was a time when ill fortune was likely to be attributed to supernatural causes. Mackay notes that many of these cases were initiated to settle scores among neighbors or associates and that extremely low standards of evidence were applied to most of these trials. Mackay claims that "thousands upon thousands" of people were executed as witches over two and a half centuries, with the most significant numbers killed in Germany."
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