24. Rattling Brains Into Insanity
The paranoia about train speeds killing people with G forces eventually receded. Railways and trains proliferated, with no reported fatalities from people getting their hearts or lungs flattened against their backs, or of women having their uteruses fly out of their bodies. However, the early fears were replaced by another bizarre fear, this one of a danger to the mind instead of the body. By the 1850s, Victorians worried that the steadily increasing train speeds, combined with the rattle and jarring motions within railway cars, were causing injuries to passengers’ brains, and driving people insane.
Sensationalist media did their part to whip up the frenzy. An illustrative example occurred in 1865, during a train journey from Carnforth to Liverpool in England. An armed passenger went crazy and started attacking windows to get at passengers in other compartments. When the train slowed down and stopped at its next station, the lunatic calmed down. When the train got underway again, he went nuts, only to calm down once more when the train stopped at the next station. The pattern of going wild while the train was in motion, then calming down when it slowed down and stopped, was repeated until the train reached Liverpool.
