manner as those in the Breisgau did, according to Schenck's
account. They were not satisfied, however, with a dance of three
hours' duration, but continued day and night in a state of mental
aberration, like persons in an ecstasy, until they fell exhausted
to the ground; and when they came to themselves again they felt
relieved from a distressing uneasiness and painful sensation of
weight in their bodies, of which they had complained for several
weeks prior to St. Vitus's Day.

After this commotion they remained well for the whole year; and
such was their faith in the protecting power of the saint, that
one of them had visited this shrine at Drefelhausen more than
twenty times, and another had already kept the saint's day for the
thirty-second time at this sacred station.

The dancing fit itself was excited here, as it probably was in
other places, by music, from the effects of which the patients
were thrown into a state of convulsion. Many concurrent
testimonies serve to show that music generally contributed much to
the continuance of the St. Vitus's dance, originated and increased
its paroxysms, and was sometimes the cause of their mitigation.
So early as the fourteenth century the swarms of St. John's
dancers were accompanied by minstrels playing upon noisy
instruments, who roused their morbid feelings; and it may readily
be supposed that by the performance of lively melodies, and the
stimulating effects which the shrill tones of fifes and trumpets
would produce, a paroxysm that was perhaps but slight in itself,
might, in many cases, be increased to the most outrageous fury,
such as in later times was purposely induced in order that the
force of the disease might be exhausted by the violence of its