BODILY ILLNESS AS A MENTAL STIMULANT. 251 



their labours in the fields as if they were possessed by evil 

 spirits, and those affected were seen assembling indiscri- 

 minately from time to time, at certain appointed places, and 

 unless prevented by the lookers-on, continued to dance 

 without intermission, until their very last breath was ex- 

 pended. 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 

 builriings, or rushed headlong in 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 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.' 



It may be doubted, perhaps, by some whether such in- 

 stances 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 developed 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 deathbed said that it was impossible 

 for imagination to picture or pen to describe the delightful 



