perfect, that some patients returned to the factory or the plough
as if nothing had happened. Others, on the contrary, paid the
penalty of their folly by so total a loss of power, that they
could not regain their former health, even by the employment of
the most strengthening remedies. Medical men were astonished to
observe that women in an advanced state of pregnancy were capable
of going through an attack of the disease without the slightest
injury to their offspring, which they protected merely by a
bandage passed round the waist. Cases of this kind were not
infrequent so late as Schenck's time. That patients should be
violently affected by music, and their paroxysms brought on and
increased by it, is natural with such nervous disorders, where
deeper impressions are made through the ear, which is the most
intellectual of all the organs, than through any of the other
senses. On this account the magistrates hired musicians for the
purpose of carrying the St. Vitus's dancers so much the quicker
through the attacks, and directed that athletic men should be sent
among them in order to complete the exhaustion, which had been
often observed to produce a good effect. At the same time there
was a prohibition against wearing red garments, because, at the
sight of this colour, those affected became so furious that they
flew at the persons who wore it, and were so bent upon doing them
an injury that they could with difficulty be restrained. They
frequently tore their own clothes whilst in the paroxysm, and were
guilty of other improprieties, so that the more opulent employed
confidential attendants to accompany them, and to take care that
they did no harm either to themselves or others. This
extraordinary disease was, however, so greatly mitigated in
Schenck's time, that the St. Vitus's dancers had long since ceased
to stroll from town to town; and that physician, like Paracelsus,