from complaint until the next attack. This practice of swathing
was resorted to on account of the tympany which followed these
spasmodic ravings, but the bystanders frequently relieved patients
in a less artificial manner, by thumping and trampling upon the
parts affected. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being
insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were
haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names
they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted that they
felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which
obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw
the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary,
according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and
variously reflected in their imaginations.

Where the disease was completely developed, the attack commenced
with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground
senseless, panting and labouring for breath. They foamed at the
mouth, and suddenly springing up began their dance amidst strange
contortions. Yet the malady doubtless made its appearance very
variously, and was modified by temporary or local circumstances,
whereof non-medical contemporaries but imperfectly noted the
essential particulars, accustomed as they were to confound their
observation of natural events with their notions of the world of
spirits.

It was but a few months ere this demoniacal disease had spread
from Aix-la-Chapelle, where it appeared in July, over the
neighbouring Netherlands. In Liege, Utrecht, Tongres, and many
other towns of Belgium, the dancers appeared with garlands in
their hair, and their waists girt with cloths, that they might, as