m the German by B. G. Babington.

[60] "Chorus Sancti Viti, or St. Vitus' dance; the
lascivious dance, Paracelsus calls it, because they
that are taken with it can do nothing but dance till
they be dead or cured. It is so called for that the
parties so troubled were wont to go to St. Vitus for
help; and, after they had danced there awhile, they
were certainly freed. 'Tis strange to hear how long
they will dance, and in what manner, over stools,
forms, and tables. One in red clothes they cannot
abide. Musick above all things they love; and
therefore magistrates in Germany will hire musicians
to play to them, and some lusty, sturdy companions
to dance with them. This disease hath been very
common in Germany, as appears by those relations of
Schenkius, and Paracelsus in his book of madness,
who brags how many several persons he hath cured of
it. Felix Platerus (_de Mentis Alienat._ cap. 3)
reports of a woman in Basel whom he saw, that danced
a whole month together. The Arabians call it a kind
of palsie. Bodine, in his fifth book, speaks of this
infirmity; Monavius, in his last epistle to
Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you
may read more of it."--_Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy._

[61] The Bishop Theodoret of Cyrus in Syria states that,
at the festival of St. John, large fires were
annually kindled in several towns, through which
men, women, and children jumped; and that young
children were carried through by their mothers. He
considered this custom as an ancient Asiatic
ceremony of purification, similar to that recorded
of Ahaz, in II Kings, xvi. 3. Zonaras, Balsamon, and
Photius speak of the St. John's fires in
Constantinople, and the first looks upon them as the
remains of an old Grecian custom. Even in modern
times fires are still lighted on St. John's Day in
Brittany and other remote parts of Continental
Europe, through the smoke of which the cattle are
driven in the belief that they will thus be
protected from contagious and other diseases, and in
these practices protective fumigation originated.