of their liberty; placed in solitary confinement, and made to sit
in an uncomfortable place, until their misery brought them to
their senses and to a feeling of penitence. He then permitted
them gradually to return to their accustomed habits. Severe
corporal chastisement was not omitted; but, on the other hand,
angry resistance on the part of the patient was to be sedulously
avoided, on the ground that it might increase his malady, or even
destroy him: moreover, where it seemed proper, Paracelsus allayed
the excitement of the nerves by immersion in cold water. On the
treatment of the third kind we shall not here enlarge. It was to
be effected by all sorts of wonderful remedies, composed of the
quintessences; and it would require, to render it intelligible, a
more extended exposition of peculiar principles than suits our
present purpose.


SECT. 6--DECLINE AND TERMINATION OF THE DANCING PLAGUE


About this time the St. Vitus's dance began to decline, so that
milder forms of it appeared more frequently, while the severer
cases became more rare; and even in these, some of the important
symptoms gradually disappeared. Paracelsus makes no mention of
the tympanites as taking place after the attacks, although it may
occasionally have occurred; and Schenck von Graffenberg, a
celebrated physician of the latter half of the sixteenth century,
speaks of this disease as having been frequent only in the time of
his forefathers; his descriptions, however, are applicable to the
whole of that century, and to the close of the fifteenth. The St.
Vitus's dance attacked people of all stations, especially those