DISEASE OF THE BODY A MENTAL STIMULANT. 81 



and remained free from complaint until the next attack .... While 

 dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external im- 

 pressions through the senses ; but they were haunted by visions, their 

 fancies conjuring up spirits, whose names they shrieked out ; and some 

 of them afterward 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." The epidemic 

 attacked people of all stations, but especially those who led a sedentary 

 life, such as shoemakers and tailors ; yet even the most robust peasants 

 finally yielded to it. They " abandoned their ktbors in the fields as if 

 they were possessed by evil spirits, and those affected were seen assem- 

 bling indiscriminately from time to time, at certain appointed places, 

 and, unless prevented by the lookers-on, continued to dance without in- 

 termission, until their very last breath was expended. Their fury and 

 extravagance of demeanor 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 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 exhaustion of the 

 body. The cure effected by these stormy attacks was in many cases 

 so perfect that some patients returned to the factory or plow, 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." 



It may be doubted, perhaps, by some whether such instances as these 

 illustrate so much the state to which the mind is reduced when the body 

 is diseased, as the state to which the body is reduced when the mind is 

 diseased, though, as we have seen, the dancing mania when fully devel- 

 oped followed always on bodily illness. In the cases we now have to 

 deal with, the diseased condition of the body was unmistakable. 



Mrs. Hemans on her death-bed said that it was impossible for imagi- 

 nation to picture or pen to describe the delightful visions which passed 

 before her mind. They made her waking hours more delightful than those 

 passed in sleep. It is evident that these visions had their origin in the 

 vol. xv. 6 



