I've once read a text. I think it was sci-fi related. Now I am searching for it. And I hardly can remember any hard facts. Here are some fragments:
A robot is traveling to a planet. (I guess the inhabitants are humans.) He carries some kind of empathy-serum with him. He sets it free (maybe by accident), and everybody went nuts. Man start feeling the birth-pain of their woman; and other crazy stuff happens. Something bad happens to the robot (can't even remember the exact end).
The first time I found this one by accident. I neither can't remember if it was German or English. Reading the Wikipedia entries for Julius von Voß, Stanislaw Lem, and Isaac Asimov don't ring any bell (so far).
some more loose details
I remember two people (robots?) arguing about, if more empathy would help .. (?) Then someone starts reporting about a failed attempt to prove that. A robot has been sent (by its inventor?). I remember a bridge, and a river - maybe the point where the (serum?) hits the environment. Happy people flock together (in small groups of three or so) and chase away sad people, because they don't wanna feel it. In the end everybody realizes that the robot is not affected. Everybody becomes very angry. Seeing him as the root of their misery (to share everyones feelings). They hunt him down. He got damaged.
I remember the whole story, as if someone talks about his own adventure of the past.
other circumstances
I might have read something about Julius von Voß in a german magazine back in 2012. Don't remember which one. No ordinary. Never seen that mag before and after. It was all about science-fiction as seen from distant past authors. I specifically remember "Ein Roman aus dem ein und zwanzigsten Jahrhundert" mentioned there. I did a bit of research back then, and stumbled upon the above mentioned short story about empathy (maybe it's just a part of a longer text).
When I remember it correctly the term "empathy" wasn't even used at all.