n the
intoxication of an artificial delirium. There is hence good ground for
supposing that the frantic celebration of the festival of St. John, A.D.
1374, only served to bring to a crisis a malady which had been long
impending; and if we would further inquire how a hitherto harmless
usage, which like many others had but served to keep up superstition,
could degenerate into so serious a disease, we must take into account
the unusual excitement of men's minds and the consequences of
wretchedness and want. The bowels, which in many were debilitated by
hunger and bad food, were precisely the parts which in most cases were
attacked with excruciating pain, and the tympanitic state of the
intestines points out to the intelligent physician an origin of the
disorder which is well worth consideration.

The dancing mania of the year 1374 was, in fact, no new disease, but a
phenomenon well known in the Middle Ages, of which many wondrous stories
were traditionally current among the people. In the year 1237, upward of
a hundred children were said to have been suddenly seized with this
disease at Erfurt, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping along the
road to Arnstadt. When they arrived at that place they fell exhausted
to the ground, and, according to an account of an old chronicle, many of
them, after they were taken home by their parents, died, and the rest
remained affected to the end of their lives with the permanent tremor.
Another occurrence was related to have taken place on the Mosel bridge
at Utrecht, on June 17, 1278, when two hundred fanatics began to dance,
and would not desist until a priest passed who was carrying the host to
a person that was sick, upon which, as if in punishment of their crime,
the bridge gave way, and they were all drowned. A similar event also
occurred, so early as the year 1027, near the convent church of Kolbig,
not far from Bernburg. According to an oft-repeated tradition, eighteen
peasants, some of whose names are still preserved, are said to have
disturbed divine service on Christmas Eve by dancing and brawling in the
church-yard, whereupon the priest, Ruprecht, inflicted a curse upon
them, that they should dance and scream for a whole year without
ceasing. This curse is stated to have been completely fulfilled, so that
the unfortunate sufferers at length sank knee deep into the earth, and
remained the whole time without nourishment, until they were finally
released by the intercession of