g
mania have occurred at various periods in many parts of
Europe, Africa, and the United States. Nathaniel Pearce, an
eye-witness, who resided nine years in Abyssinia early in
the nineteenth century, gives a graphic account of a similar
epidemic there, called _tigretier_, from the Tigre district,
in which it was most prevalent. In France, from 1727 to
1790, an epidemic prevailed among the Convulsionnaires, who
received relief from brethren in the faith known as
Secourists, very much after the rough methods administered
to the St. John's dancers and to the _tarantati_. About the
same period nervous epidemics of a similar character,
largely propagated by sympathy, were very prevalent in the
Shetland Islands and in various parts of Scotland, but were
for the most part eradicated by cold-water immersion.

An epidemic of _chorea sancti Viti_, recorded by Felix
Robertson of Tennessee (Philadelphia, 1805), found vent in
an unparalleled blaze of enthusiastic religion, which spread
with lightning-like rapidity in almost every part of
Tennessee and Kentucky, and in various parts of Virginia, in
1800, being distinguished by uncontrollable and infectious
muscular contractions, gesticulations, crying, laughing,
shouting, and singing. To similar epidemics are attributed
the uncontrollable acts which, till late in the nineteenth
century, were a feature of North American camp meetings for
divine service in the open air, and which exhibited the same
form of mental disturbance as did the St. Vitus' dance in
mediaeval Europe.

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 bystanders, for hours together in
wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of
exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as
if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in cloths bound
tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered, and
remained free from complaint until the next attack. This practice of
swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany which followed these
spasmodic ravings, but the bystanders fre