The insanity of the Convulsionnaires lasted, without interruption, until the year 1790, and during these fifty-nine years, called forth more lamentable phenomena than the enlightened spirits of the eighteenth century would be willing to allow. The grossest immorality found, in the secret meetings of the believers, a sure sanctuary, and, in their bewildering devotional exercises, a convenient cloak. It was of no avail that, in the year 1762, the Grands Secours was forbidden by act of parliament; for thenceforth this work was carried on in secrecy, and with greater zeal than ever; it was in vain, too, that some physicians, and, among the rest, the austere, pious Hecquet[333], and after him Lorry[334], attributed the conduct of the Convulsionnaires to natural causes. Men of distinction among the upper classes, as, for instance, Montgeron the deputy, and Lambert an ecclesiastic (obt. 1813), stood forth as the defenders of this sect; and the numerous writings[335] which were exchanged on the subject, served, by the importance which they thus attached to it, to give it stability. The revolution, finally, shook the structure of this pernicious mysticism. It was not, however, destroyed; for, even during the period of the greatest excitement, the secret meetings were still kept up; prophetic books, by Convulsionnaires of various denominations, have appeared even in the most recent times, and only a few years ago (in 1828) this once celebrated sect still existed, although without the convulsions and the extraordinarily rude aid of the brethren of the faith, which, amidst the boasted pre-eminence of French intellectual advancement, remind us most forcibly of the dark ages of the St. John’s dancers[336]. 6. Similar fanatical sects exhibit among all nations[337] of ancient and modern times the same phenomena. An over-strained bigotry is, in itself, and considered in a medical point of view, a destructive irritation of the senses, which draws men away from the efficiency of mental freedom, and peculiarly favours the most injurious emotions. Sensual ebullitions, with strong convulsions of the nerves, appear sooner or later[338], and insanity, suicidal disgust of life, and incurable nervous disorders[339], are but too frequently the consequences of a perverse, and, indeed, hypocritical zeal, which has ever prevailed, as well in the assemblies of the Mænades and Corybantes of antiquity, as under the semblance of religion among the Christians and Mahomedans.