re deeper impressions are made through
the ear, which is the most intellectual of all the organs, than through
any of the other senses. On this account the magistrates hired musicians
for the purpose of carrying the St. Vitus's dancers so much the quicker
through the attacks, and directed that athletic men should be sent among
them in order to complete the exhaustion, which had been often observed
to produce a good effect. At the same time there was a prohibition
against wearing red garments, because, at the sight of this colour, those
affected became so furious that they flew at the persons who wore it, and
were so bent upon doing them an injury that they could with difficulty be
restrained. They frequently tore their own clothes whilst in the
paroxysm, and were guilty of other improprieties, so that the more
opulent employed confidential attendants to accompany them, and to take
care that they did no harm either to themselves or others. This
extraordinary disease was, however, so greatly mitigated in Schenck's
time, that the St. Vitus's dancers had long since ceased to stroll from
town to town; and that physician, like Paracelsus, makes no mention of
the tympanitic inflation of the bowels. Moreover, most of those affected
were only annually visited by attacks; and the occasion of them was so
manifestly referable to the prevailing notions of that period, that if
the unqualified belief in the supernatural agency of saints could have
been abolished, they would not have had any return of the complaint.
Throughout the whole of June, prior to the festival of St. John, patients
felt a disquietude and restlessness which they were unable to overcome.
They were dejected, timid, and anxious; wandered about in an unsettled
state, being tormented with twitching pains, which seized them suddenly
in different parts, and eagerly expected the eve of St. John's day, in
the confident hope that by dancing at the altars of this saint, or of St.
Vitus (for in the Breisgau aid was equally sought from both), they would
be freed from all their sufferings. This hope was not disappointed; and
they remained, for the rest of the year, exempt from any further attack,
after having thus, by dancing and raving for three hours, satisfied an
irresistible demand of nature. There were at that period two chapels in
the Breisgau visited by the St. Vitus's dancers; namely, the Chapel of
St. Vitus at Biessen, near Breisach, and that of St. John, near
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