The cure effected by these stormy attacks was in many cases so perfect, that some patients returned to the factory or the plough as if nothing had happened. Others, on the contrary, paid the penalty of their folly by so total a loss of power, that they could not regain their former health, even by the employment of the most strengthening remedies. Medical men were astonished to observe, that women in an advanced state of pregnancy were capable of going through an attack of the disease, without the slightest injury to their offspring, which they protected merely by a bandage passed round the waist. Cases of this kind were not unfrequent so late as Schenck’s time. That patients should be violently affected by music, and their paroxysms brought on and increased by it, is natural with such nervous disorders; where 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[240]. 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 referrible 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,