ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a particular medical or psychological theory of the disorders encountered in the awakening, rather to review the controversies that the physical and mental effects stimulated amongst the numerous authors that make up the corpus of the Ulster Revival literature. The revival had been news in the local Ulster press since the end of March 1859. Knowledge of it had reached Edinburgh by early May and London by late May. J. T. Carson, like James Jasper Macaldin, admitted that hysteria existed in the revival districts, something to expect in times of excitement. The critics, however, included the revival in the category of erroneous religion, while the apologists believed in the genuine religious undercurrents of the awakening. For the former, all cases of ‘religious excitement’ were indicative of faulty religion, and the latter were obliged to accept the fact that the Ulster Revival did have a few serious mental casualties.
