# Koro, Amok and the Cultural Shaping of Symptoms · The Cult Dossier · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

Source: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/atlas/library/cults/168-koro-amok-and-the-cultural-shaping-of-symptoms/ · The Congregation of Tomorrow · the Atlas · language: en
The same words a person sees on this page, nothing more and nothing hidden.
Our own words are free to use under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), naming the Congregation of Tomorrow. Words of others keep their own terms.
Every page of the site, listed: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/ai/pages.json · the whole site in one file: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/llms-full.txt

← The Cult Dossier: all 182
The Cult Dossier · No. 168 · Moral Panic / Mass Hysteria
Koro, Amok and the Cultural Shaping of Symptoms
Suo yang; genital retraction syndrome; running amok; latah; cultural concepts of distress
Long-standing; the Singapore epidemic October–November 1967 · Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, southern China, north-east India, West Africa
XVI. CONTAGION — SYMPTOMS THAT SPREAD WITHOUT A PATHOGEN
Not religious, but culturally specific. The afflictions take their form from local beliefs about the body, and change form when the beliefs do.
### Who led it
### What it worshipped and taught
### Who was in it
### How it ended, or where it stands
### The dead
### Of note
### Its timeline
- 1967 SWINE FEVER in Singapore leads to the vaccination of pigs against it.
- 29–31 OCTOBER 1967 A NEWSPAPER REPORTS THAT PEOPLE HAVE DEVELOPED KORO FROM EATING PORK FROM VACCINATED PIGS. Cases reach the Singapore General Hospital emergency unit on 31 October, overwhelmingly among ethnically Chinese men. A Ministry of Primary Production statement that the vaccine is harmless to people seems only to give the rumour substance. Sufferers arrive at hospitals gripping themselves, or held by relatives, convinced they are dying.
- 3 NOVEMBER 1967 97 MEN ARE SEEN AT THE GENERAL HOSPITAL IN A SINGLE DAY, against a normal rate of about one case every two or three months. The later study records 469 cases in all, 95 per cent of them Chinese men. THE TRUE FIGURE IS HIGHER AND CANNOT BE RECOVERED: the count came mainly from hospital emergency units, and few doctors elsewhere sent returns.
- 4–7 NOVEMBER 1967 THE OUTBREAK IS ENDED BY PUBLIC STATEMENT. A Singapore Medical Association panel announces on 4 November, and the Ministry of Health on 6 November, also on television, that koro comes from fear and is not a physical disease with fatalities. Cases at the General Hospital fall to 38 the next day and to 17 on 7 November, and within a month there are none.
- 1982 A large koro epidemic runs through north-east India. Comparable genital-theft panics are documented in West Africa, where the attribution is to sorcery rather than to pork.
- 1994, then 2013 DSM-IV (1994) lists koro and amok in a glossary of CULTURE-BOUND SYNDROMES. DSM-5 (2013) drops the term for CULTURAL CONCEPTS OF DISTRESS, and koro is no longer on the list.
The Atlas The Door