The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania, by
Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker, Edited by Henry Morley, Translated by
Benjamin Guy Babington

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania

Author: Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

Editor: Henry Morley

Release Date: May 7, 2007 [eBook #1739]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK DEATH, AND THE DANCING
MANIA***

Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition by Jane Duff, proofed
by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org.

The Black Death
and
The Dancing Mania.

FROM THE GERMAN OF
J. F. C. HECKER.

TRANSLATED BY
B. G. BABINGTON.

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
1888.

INTRODUCTION

Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker was one of three generations of
distinguished professors of medicine. His father, August Friedrich
Hecker, a most industrious writer, first practised as a physician in
Frankenhausen, and in 1790 was appointed Professor of Medicine at the
University of Erfurt. In 1805 he was called to the like professorship at
the University of Berlin. He died at Berlin in 1811.

Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker was born at Erfurt in January, 1795. He
went, of course--being then ten years old--with his father to Berlin in
1805, studied at Berlin in the Gymnasium and University, but interrupted
his studies at the age of eighteen to fight as a volunteer in the war for
a renunciation of Napoleon and all his works. After Waterloo he went
back to his studies, took his doctor's degree in 1817 with a treatise on
the "Antiquities of Hydrocephalus," and became privat-docent in the
Medical Faculty of the Berlin University. His inclination was strong
from the first towards the historical side of inquiries into Medicine.
This caused him to undertake a "History of Medicine," of which the first
volume appeared in 1822. It obtained rank for him at Berlin as
Extraordinary Professor of the History of Medicine. This office was
changed into an Ordinary professorship of the same study in 1834, and
Hecker held that office until his death in 1850.

The o