who led a sedentary life, such as shoemakers and tailors; but even
the most robust peasants abandoned their labours in the fields, as
if they were possessed by evil spirits; and thus those affected
were seen assembling indiscriminately, from time to time, at
certain appointed places, and, unless prevented by the lookers-on,
continuing to dance without intermission, until their very last
breath was expended. Their fury and extravagance of demeanour so
completely deprived them of their senses, that many of them dashed
their brains out against the walls and corners of buildings, or
rushed headlong into rapid rivers, where they found a watery
grave. Roaring and foaming as they were, the bystanders could
only succeed in restraining them by placing benches and chairs in
their way, so that, by the high leaps they were thus tempted to
take, their strength might be exhausted. As soon as this was the
case, they fell as it were lifeless to the ground, and, by very
slow degrees, again recovered their strength. Many there were
who, even with all this exertion, had not expended the violence of
the tempest which raged within them, but awoke with newly-revived
powers, and again and again mixed with the crowd of dancers, until
at length the violent excitement of their disordered nerves was
allayed by the great involuntary exertion of their limbs; and the
mental disorder was calmed by the extreme exhaustion of the body.
Thus the attacks themselves were in these cases, as in their
nature they are in all nervous complaints, necessary crises of an
inward morbid condition which was transferred from the sensorium
to the nerves of motion, and, at an earlier period, to the
abdominal plexus, where a deep-seated derangement of the system
was perceptible from the secretion of flatus in the intestines.

The cure effected by these stormy attacks was in many cases so