nd thoughts
concerning these oaths in the image;" and when he had succeeded in this,
he was to burn the image, so that not a particle of it should remain. In
all this there was no mention made of St. Vitus, or any of the other
mediatory saints, which is accounted for by the circumstance that at this
time an open rebellion against the Romish Church had begun, and the
worship of saints was by many rejected as idolatrous. For the second
kind of St. Vitus's dance, arising from sensual irritation, with which
women were far more frequently affected than men, Paracelsus recommended
harsh treatment and strict fasting. He directed that the patients should
be deprived of their liberty; placed in solitary confinement, and made to
sit in an uncomfortable place, until their misery brought them to their
senses and to a feeling of penitence. He then permitted them gradually
to return to their accustomed habits. Severe corporal chastisement was
not omitted; but, on the other hand, angry resistance on the part of the
patient was to be sedulously avoided, on the ground that it might
increase his malady, or even destroy him: moreover, where it seemed
proper, Paracelsus allayed the excitement of the nerves by immersion in
cold water. On the treatment of the third kind we shall not here
enlarge. It was to be effected by all sorts of wonderful remedies,
composed of the quintessences; and it would require, to render it
intelligible, a more extended exposition of peculiar principles than
suits our present purpose.

SECT. 6--DECLINE AND TERMINATION OF THE DANCING PLAGUE

About this time the St. Vitus's dance began to decline, so that milder
forms of it appeared more frequently, while the severer cases became more
rare; and even in these, some of the important symptoms gradually
disappeared. Paracelsus makes no mention of the tympanites as taking
place after the attacks, although it may occasionally have occurred; and
Schenck von Graffenberg, a celebrated physician of the latter half of the
sixteenth century, speaks of this disease as having been frequent only in
the time of his forefathers; his descriptions, however, are applicable to
the whole of that century, and to the close of the fifteenth. The St.
Vitus's dance attacked people of all stations, especially those who led a
sedentary life, such as shoemakers and tailors; but even the most robust
peasants abandoned their labours in the fields, as if they were possessed
by evil sp