[4][5][6] Beard noted that the men were "suggestible"[7] and that they "could not help repeating the word or sounds that came from the person that ordered them any more than they could help striking, dropping, throwing, jumping, or starting.
[3] Another set of cases were found in a single family where the father, his two sons, and his two grandchildren exhibited "jumping" behavior.
Documentation of direct observation of "Jumping Frenchmen" has been scarce, and while video evidence was recorded by several researchers that showed the condition to be real, MH and JM Saint-Hilaire concluded from studying eight affected people that it was brought on by conditions at their lumber camps and was psychological, not neurological.
There are many overlaps when compared clinically, but the abnormal "jumping" response is always provoked, unlike the involuntary tics in Tourette syndrome.
[9] He recorded "startle, jumping, and tic-like behaviors"[7] among the French Canadians and lumberjacks who lived near Moosehead Lake in northern Maine.
[7] History of Medicine professor Howard I. Kushner calls Beard's description "the most influential and detailed study" of these behaviors.
[7] According to Kushner, the French physician Jean-Martin Charcot chose his resident, Georges Gilles de la Tourette, to investigate the "relationship between tic disorders and jumping and startle behaviors reported in Malaysia, Siberia, and Maine";[11] Gilles de la Tourette translated Beard's descriptions and published them one year after Beard's papers.