estow any great
praise, but must be content with the remark that it was in conformity
with the notions of the age in which he lived. For the first kind, which
often originated in passionate excitement, he had a mental remedy, the
efficacy of which is not to be despised, if we estimate its value in
connection with the prevalent opinions of those times. The patient was
to make an image of himself in wax or resin, and by an effort of thought
to concentrate all his blasphemies and sins in it. "Without the
intervention of any other person, to set his whole mind and 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.[64] 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' dance, 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.

About this time the St. Vitus' 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