ived three more were seized, and during that night and the morning
of the nineteenth, eleven more, making in all twenty-four. Of these,
twenty-one were young women, two were girls of about ten years of age,
and one man, who had been much fatigued with holding the girls. Three of
the number lived about two miles from the place where the disorder
first broke out, and three at another factory in Clitheroe, about five
miles distant, which last and two more were infected entirely from
report, not having seen the other patients, but, like them and the rest
of the country, strongly impressed with the idea of the plague being
caught from the cotton. The symptoms were anxiety, strangulation, and
very strong convulsions; and these were so violent as to last without
any intermission from a quarter of an hour to twenty-four hours, and to
require four or five persons to prevent the patients from tearing their
hair and dashing their heads against the floor or walls. Dr. St. Clare
had taken with him a portable electrical machine, and by electric shocks
the patients were universally relieved without exception. As soon as the
patients and the country were assured that the complaint was merely
nervous, easily cured, and not introduced by the cotton, no fresh person
was affected. To dissipate their apprehension still further, the best
effects were obtained by causing them to take a cheerful glass and join
in a dance. On Tuesday, the twentieth, they danced, and the next day
were all at work, except two or three, who were much weakened by their
fits.

2. The Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages[299]

So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at
Aix-la-Chapelle who had come out of Germany and who, united by one
common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the
churches the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand in
hand and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses,
continued dancing, regardless of the by-standers, for hours together in
wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of
exhaustion. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible
to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions,
their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and
some of them afterward asserted that they felt as if they had been
immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high.
Others, during the paroxys