| [214] Dans la ville y eut des dansans, tant grands que petits, onze | | cents. Journal de Paris, 1785. | | | | [215] _Schenk._ v. _Grafenberg._ loc. cit. | | | | [216] “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, tables; even great bellied | | women sometimes (and yet never hurt their children) will dance | | so long that they can stir neither hand nor foot, but seem to be | | quite dead. 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 | | Basle whom he saw, that danced a whole month together. The Arabians | | call it a kind of _palsie_. Bodine, in his fifth book, de Repub. | | cap. 1. 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_, Vol. I. p. 15.—_Transl. | | note._ | | | | [217] _J. of Köningshoven_, the oldest German Chronicle in | | existence. The contents are general, but devoted more exclusively | | to Alsace and Strasburg, published by _Schiltern_, Strasburg, 1698. | | 4to. Observat. 21, of St. Vitus’s Dance, p. 1085. f. | | | | “_Viel hundert_ fingen zu Strassburg an | | Zu tanzen und springen Frau und Mann, | | Am offnen Markt, Gassen und Strassen | | Tag und Nacht ihrer viel nicht assen. | | Bis ihn das Wüthen wieder gelag. | | St. Vits Tanz ward genannt die Plag.” | | | | “Many hundreds of men and women began to dance and jump in the |