"Amok" is an innovation which I do not recommend. It consists in
letting go when things get too bad, and doing damage with tongue,
hands and feet. It is the tantrum carried to its logical
conclusion. I saw one instance where a henpecked husband "ran amok"
and killed or wounded seventeen people before he himself was
killed. It is the national and therefore the honorable mode of
committing suicide among the natives of Celebes, and is the
fashionable way of escaping from their difficulties. A man can not
pay, he is taken for a slave, or has gambled away his wife or child
into slavery, he sees no way of recovering what he has lost, and
becomes desperate. He will not put up with such cruel wrongs, but
will be revenged on mankind and die like a hero. He grasps his
knife, and the next moment draws out the weapon and stabs a man to
the heart. He runs on with bloody kris in his hand, stabbing every
one he meets. "Amok! Amok!" then resounds through the streets.
Spears, krises, knives, guns and clubs are brought out against him.
He rushes madly forward, kills all he can--men, women and
children--and dies, overwhelmed by numbers, amid all the excitement
of a battle.
--_Alfred Russel Wallace, in "The Malay Archipelago"_