Chapter XXIV (7)

“The noble and the mean fearlessly bound themselves by an oath to
extirpate the Jews by fire and sword, and to snatch them from their
protectors, of whom the number was so small, that throughout all
Germany but few places can be mentioned where these unfortunate people
were not regarded as outlaws, and martyred and burnt. Solemn summonses
were issued from Berne, to the towns of Basle, Freyburg, and
Strasburg, to pursue the Jews as prisoners. The burgomasters and
senators, indeed, opposed this requisition; but in Basle the populace
obliged them to bind themselves by an oath to burn the Jews, and to
forbid persons of that community from entering their city for the
space of two hundred years. Upon this all the Jews in Basle, whose
number could not be inconsiderable, _were enclosed in a wooden
building, constructed for the purpose, and burnt together with it_,
upon the mere outcry of the people, without sentence or trial, which
indeed would have availed them nothing. _Soon after the same thing
took place at Freyburg._ A regular diet was held at Bennefeeld, in
Alsace, where the bishops, lords, and barons, as also deputies of the
counties and towns, consulted how they should proceed with regard to
the Jews: and when the deputies of Strasburg—not, indeed, the bishop
of this town, who proved himself a violent fanatic—spoke in favour of
the persecuted, as nothing criminal was substantiated against them, a
great outcry was raised, and it was vehemently asked why, if so, they
had covered their wells and removed their buckets?” [The wells were
not used in the mere suspicion that they were poisoned, and then the
covering of them up became a proof with these reasoners that they
_had_ been poisoned]. “A sanguinary decree was resolved upon, of which
the populace, who obeyed here the call of the nobles and superior
clergy, became but the too willing executioners. Wherever the Jews
were not burnt they were at least banished, and so being compelled to
wander about, they fell into the hands of the country people, who
without humanity, and regardless of all laws, persecuted them with
fire and sword. At Spires the Jews, driven to despair, assembled in
their own habitations, which they set on fire, and thus consumed
themselves with their families.”

The atrocities, in short, that were committed against this unhappy people were innumerable. At Strasburg 2000 men were burnt in their own burial-ground. At Mayence, 12,000 are said to have been put to a cruel death. At Eslingen the whole Jewish community burned themselves in their own synagogue. Those whom the Christians saved they insisted upon baptising! And, as fanaticism begets fanaticism, Jewish mothers were seen throwing their children on the pile, _to prevent their being baptised_, and then precipitating themselves into the flames. From many of the accused the rack extorted a confession of guilt; and as some Christians also were sentenced to death for poisoning the wells, Dr Hecker suggests that it is not improbable the very belief in the prevalence of the crime had induced some men of morbid imagination really to commit it. When a faith in witchcraft, he observes, was prevalent, many an old woman was tempted to mutter spells against her neighbour. The false accusation had ended in producing, if not the crime itself, yet the criminal intention.

When we remember what took place in England under the reign of one Titus Oates, we shall not conclude that these terrible hallucinations of the public mind are proofs of any very peculiar condition of barbarism. Then, as at the later epoch to which we have alluded, a very marvellous plot was devised and thoroughly credited. All the Jews throughout Christendom were under the control and government of certain superiors at Toledo—a secret and mysterious council of Rabbis—from whom they received their commands. These prepared the poison with their own hands, from spiders, owls, and other venomous animals, and distributed it in little bags, with injunctions where it was to be thrown. Dr Hecker gives us, in an appendix, an official account of the “Confessions made on the 15th September, in the year of our Lord 1348, in the castle of Chillon, by the Jews arrested in Neustadt on the charge of poisoning the wells, springs, and other places, also food, &c., with the design of destroying and extirpating all Christians.” These confessions were, of course, produced by the rack, or by the threat of torture, and the manifest inutility of any defence or denial. Nor must it be forgotten, that the official report was drawn up _after_ the whole of the Jews at Neustadt had been burnt on this very charge. Amongst these confessions is one of Balaviginus, a Jewish physician, arrested at Chillon “in consequence of being found in the neighbourhood.” He was put for a short time upon the rack, and, after being taken down, “confessed, after much hesitation, that, about ten weeks before, the Rabbi Jacob of Toledo sent him, by a Jewish boy, _some poison in the mummy of an egg_: it was a powder sewed up in a thin leathern pouch, accompanied by a letter, commanding him, on penalty of excommunication, and by his required obedience to the law, to throw the poison into the larger and more frequented wells of Thonon.” Similar letters had been sent to other Jews. All Jews, indeed, were under the necessity of obeying these injunctions. He, Balaviginus, had done so; he had thrown the poison into several wells. It was a powder half red and half black. Red and black spots were produced by the plague; it was right that this poison should partake of these two colours.

Conveyed over the lake from Chillon to Clarens to point out the well into which he had thrown the powder, Balaviginus, “on being conducted to the spot, and having seen the well, acknowledged that to be the place, saying, ‘This is the well into which I put the poison.’ The well was examined in his presence, and the linen cloth in which the poison had been wrapped was found. He acknowledged this to be the linen which had contained the poison; he described it as being of two colours—red and black.” We follow in imagination this Jewish physician. Taken from the rack to his cell, he repeats whatever absurdity his unrelenting persecutors put into his mouth. Rabbi Jacob of Toledo—mummy of an egg—what you will. Conducted to the well—yes, this was the well; shown the very rag—yes, this was the rag;—and the powder? yes, it was red and black. What scorn and bitterness must have mingled with the agony of the Jewish physician!

Amidst all this we hear the scourge and miserable chant of the Flagellants, stirring up the people to fresh persecutions, and infecting their minds with a superstition as terrible as the vice it pretended to expiate. This was not, indeed, their first appearance in Europe; nor did the Flagellants do more, at the commencement, than exaggerate the sort of piety their own church had taught them. Happily, as their fanaticism rose, they put themselves in opposition to the hierarchy, and were thus the sooner dispersed. In their spiritual exultation they presumed to reform or to dispense with the priesthood. They found themselves, therefore, in their turn subjected to grave denunciations, and pronounced to be one cause of the wrath of Heaven.

All this time what were the physicians doing? In the history of the plague, written by a physician, the topic, we may be sure, is not forgotten. But the information we glean is of a very scanty, unsatisfactory character. As to the origin of the plague—“A grand conjunction of the three superior planets, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, in the sign of Aquarius, which took place, according to Guy de Chauliac, on the 24th March 1345, was generally received as its principal cause. In fixing the day, this physician, who was deeply versed in astrology, did not agree with others; wherefore there arose various disputations of weight in that age, but of none in ours.” The medical faculty of Paris pronounced the same opinion. Being commissioned to report on the causes and the remedies of this Great Mortality, they commence thus: “It is known that in India, and the vicinity of the Great Sea, the constellations which emulated the rays of the sun, and the warmth of the heavenly fire, exerted their power especially against that sea, and struggled violently with its waters.” Hence vapours and corrupted fogs; hence no wholesome rain, or hail, or snow, or dew, could refresh the earth. But notwithstanding this learning, quite peculiar to the age, they were not more at fault than other learned bodies have been in later times, in the practical remedies they suggested against the disease. They were not entirely occupied in fixing the day when Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn, had combated the sun over the great Indian Ocean. “They did,” as Dr Hecker says, “what human intellect could do in the actual condition of the healing art; and their knowledge of the disease was by no means despicable.” When fevers have attained to that malignancy that they take the name of plagues, they have escaped, we suspect, from the control of the physician;—just as when fires take the name of conflagrations, you must devote all your efforts to the saving of what is yet unconsumed, and checking the extension of the flames.

Amongst the consequences of the plague, Dr Hecker notices that the church acquired treasures and large properties in land, even to a greater extent than after the Crusades; and that, on the subsidence of the calamity, many entered the priesthood, or flocked to the monasteries, who had no other motive than to participate in this wealth. He adds, also, that,—

“After the cessation of the Black Plague, a greater fecundity in women
was everywhere remarkable—a grand phenomenon, which, from its
occurrence after every destructive pestilence, proves to conviction,
if any occurrence can do so, the prevalence of a higher power in the
direction of general organic life. Marriages were, almost without
exception, prolific, and double and treble births were more frequent
than at other times; under which head we should remember the strange
remark, that after the ‘great mortality’ _the children were said to
have got fewer teeth than before_; at which contemporaries were
mightily shocked, and even later writers have felt surprise.

“If we examine the grounds of this oft-repeated assertion, we shall
find that they were astonished to see children cut twenty, or at most
twenty-two teeth, under the supposition that a greater number had
formerly fallen to their share. Some writers of authority, as, for
example, the physician Savonarola, at Ferrara, who probably looked for
twenty-eight teeth in children, published their opinions on this
subject. Others copied from them without seeing for themselves, as
often happens in other matters which are equally evident; and thus the
world believed in a miracle of an imperfection in the human body,
which had been caused by the Black Plague.”

That a fresh impetus would be given to population seems to us quite sufficiently accounted for, without calling into aid any “higher power in the direction of general organic life.” Men and women would marry early; and the very fact of their having survived the plague would, in general, prove that they were healthy subjects, or had been well and temperately brought up. There would be the same impetus to population that an extensive emigration would cause, and an emigration that had carried away most of the sick and the feeble. The belief that double and treble births were more frequent than at other times, may perhaps be explained in the same manner as the belief that there were fewer teeth than before in the human head. No accurate observations had been at all made upon the subject.

We come next in order to _The Dancing Mania_—an epidemic of a quite different character. Not, indeed, as the name might imply, that the convulsive dance was a very slight affliction—it was felt to be quite otherwise; but because it belongs to that class of nervous maladies in which there is great room for mental or psychical influence. Such disorders spring up in a certain condition of the body, but the form they assume will depend on social circumstances, or the ideas current at the time. And thus Dr Hecker finds no difficulty in arranging the _Convulsionnaires_ of France, or the early Methodists of England and Wales, in the same category as the maniacal dancers of Germany. It was in all the cases a physical tendency of a similar character, brought out under the influence of different ideas.

Dr Hecker mentions a case which, from the simplicity of the facts, would form a good introduction to others of a more complicated character. In the year 1787, at a cotton-manufactory at Hodden Bridge, in Lancashire, a girl put a mouse into the bosom of another girl, who had a great dread of mice. It threw her into a fit, and the fit continued, with the most violent convulsions, for twenty-four hours. On the following day three other girls were seized in the same way; on the day after six more. A report was now spread that a strange disease had been introduced into the factory by a bag of cotton opened in the house. Others who had not even seen the infected, but only heard of their convulsions, were seized with the same fits. In three days, the number of the sufferers had reached to twenty-four. The symptoms were, a sense of great anxiety, strangulation, and very strong convulsions, which lasted from one to twenty-four hours, and of so violent a nature that it required four or five persons to prevent the patients from tearing their hair, and dashing their heads against the floor and walls. Dr St Clare was sent for from Preston. Dr St Clare deserves to have his name remembered. The ingenious man took with him a portable electrical machine. The electric shock cured all his patients without an exception. When this was known, and the belief could no longer hold its ground that the plague had been brought in by the cotton bag, no fresh person was affected.

If we substitute for the cotton bag a belief in some demoniacal influence, compelling people to dance against their will, we have the dancing mania of Germany. Unhappily there was no St Clare at hand, with his electrical machine, to give a favourable shock to body and mind at once, and thus disperse the malady before it gathered an overpowering strength by the very numbers of the infected.

“The effects of the Black Death,” writes Dr Hecker (whose account of
the disorder we cannot do better than give, with some abridgments),
“had not yet subsided, when a strange delusion arose in Germany. It
was a convulsion which in the most extraordinary manner infuriated the
human frame, and excited the astonishment of contemporaries for more
than two centuries, since which time it has never reappeared. It was
called the Dance of St John, or of St Vitus, on account of the
Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterised, and which gave to
those affected, whilst performing their wild dance, and screaming and
foaming with fury, all the appearance of persons possessed. It did not
remain confined to particular localities, but was propagated by the
sight of the sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over the whole of
Germany and the neighbouring countries to the north-west, which were
already prepared for its reception by the prevailing opinions of the
times.

“So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at
Aix-la-Chapelle, who had come out of Germany, and who, united by one
common delusion, exhibited to the public, both in the streets and in
the churches, the following strange spectacle. They formed circles
hand in hand, and, appearing to have lost all control over their
senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours
together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in
a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and
groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in
clothes, bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again
recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack.
This practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany
which followed these spasmodic ravings; but the bystanders frequently
relieved patients in a less artificial manner, by thumping or
trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing, they neither saw nor
heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses,
but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits, whose
names they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards 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 disease spread itself in two directions. It extended from Aix-la-Chapelle through the towns of the Netherlands, and also through the Rhenish towns. In Liege, Utrecht, and many other towns of Belgium, the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and their waists already girt with a cloth or bandage, that they might receive immediate relief on the attack of the tympany. It seems that the crowd around were often more ready to administer relief by kicks and blows than by drawing this bandage tight. The most opposite feelings seem to have been excited in the multitude by these exhibitions. Sometimes an idle and vicious mob would take advantage of them, and they became the occasion of much riot and debauchery. More frequently, however, the demoniacal origin of the disease, of which few men doubted, led to its being regarded with astonishment and horror. Religious processions were instituted on its account, masses and hymns were sung, and the whole power of the priesthood was called in to exorcise the evil spirit. The malady rose to its greatest height in some of the towns on the Rhine. At Cologne the number of the possessed amounted to more than five hundred, whilst at Metz the streets are said to have been filled (numbering women and children together) with eleven hundred dancers. Even those idle vagabonds who, for their own purposes, imitated their convulsive movements, assisted to spread the disorder; for in these maladies the susceptible are infected quite as easily by the imitation as by the reality.

The physicians stood aloof. Acknowledged as a demoniacal possession, they left the treatment of the disease entirely to the priesthood; and their exorcisms were not without avail. But it was necessary to this species of remedy that the patients should have faith in the church and its holy ministers. Without faith there would certainly, in such a case, be no cure; and, unhappily, the report had been spread by some irreverend schismatics that the disorder itself was owing—to what will our readers suppose?—to an imperfect baptism—to the baptism of children by the hands of unchaste priests. Where this notion prevailed, the exorcism, we need not say, was unavailing.

The malady first bore the name of St John’s Dance, afterwards that of St Vitus’s. This second name it took from the mere circumstance that St Vitus was the saint appealed to for its cure. A legend had been framed with a curious disregard—even for a legend—of all history and chronology, in which St Vitus, who suffered martyrdom, as the church records, under the Emperor Domitian, is described as praying, just before he bent his neck to the sword, that he might protect from the Dancing Mania all those _who should solemnise the day of his commemoration_, and fast upon its eve. The prayer was granted; a voice from heaven was heard saying, “Vitus, thy prayer is accepted.” He became, of course, the patron saint of those afflicted with the dancing plague. But the name under which it first appeared, of St John’s Dance, receives from Dr Hecker an explanation which points out to us a probable origin of the disease itself, or of the peculiar form which it assumed.

“The connection,” he says, “which John the Baptist had with the
dancing mania of the fourteenth century, was of a totally different
character. He was originally far from being a protecting saint to
those who were attacked, or one who would be likely to give them
relief from a malady considered as the work of the devil. On the
contrary, the manner in which he was worshipped afforded an important
and very evident cause for its development. From the remotest period,
perhaps even so far back as the fourth century, St John’s day was
solemnised with all sorts of strange and rude customs, of which the
original mystical meaning was variously disfigured among different
nations by superadded relics of heathenism. Thus the Germans
transferred to the festival of St John’s day an ancient heathen
usage—the kindling of the ‘hodfyr,’ which was forbidden them by St
Boniface; and the belief subsists even to the present day, that people
and animals that have leaped through these flames, or their smoke, are
protected for a whole year from fevers and other diseases, as if by a
kind of baptism by fire. Bacchanalian dances, which have originated
from similar causes among all the rude nations of the earth, and the
wild extravagancies of a heated imagination, were the constant
accompaniments of this half-heathen, half-christian festival.”

In a note at a subsequent page Dr Hecker cites some curious passages to show what in the middle ages took place at “St John’s fires.” Bones, horns, and other rubbish were heaped together to be consumed in smoke, while persons of all ages danced round the flames as if they had been possessed. Others seized burning flambeaus, and made a circuit of the fields, in the supposition that they thereby screened them from danger; while others again turned a cartwheel, to represent the retrograde movement of the sun. The last circumstance takes back the imagination to the old primitive worship of the sun; and perhaps the very fires of St John might date their history from those kindled in honour of Baal or Moloch. Dr Hecker suggests that mingling with these heathen traditions or customs a remembrance of the history of St John’s death—that dance which occasioned his decapitation—might also have had its share in determining the peculiar manner in which this saint’s day should be observed. However that may be, as we find that the first dancers in Aix-la-Chapelle appeared with St John’s name in their mouths, the conjecture is very probable that the wild revels of St John’s day had given rise, if not to the disease, yet to the type or form in which it appeared.

At a subsequent period, indeed, when the disorder had assumed, if we may so speak, a more settled aspect, the name of St John was no otherwise associated with it than the name of St Vitus. People danced upon his festival to obtain a cure. And these periodical dances, while they relieved the patients, assisted also to perpetuate the malady. Throughout the whole of June, we are told, prior to the festival of St John, many men felt a disquietude and restlessness which they were unable to overcome. They were dejected, timid, and anxious; wandered about in an unsettled state, being tormented with twitching pains, which seized them suddenly in different parts; they eagerly expected the eve of St John’s day, in the confident hope that, by dancing at the altars of this saint, they would be freed from all their sufferings. Nor were they disappointed. By dancing and raving for three hours to the utmost scope of their desires, they obtained peace for the rest of the year. For a long time, however, we hear of cases which assumed the most terrific form. Speaking of a period which embraced the close of the fifteenth century, Dr Hecker says:—

“The St Vitus’s dance attacked people of all stations, _especially
those 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 tempted to take, their strength might be exhausted.”

Music, however, was a still better resource. It excited, but it hastened forward the paroxysm, and doubtless reduced it to some measure and rhythm. The magistrates even hired musicians for the purpose of carrying the dancers the more rapidly through the attack, and directed that athletic men should be sent among them, in order to complete their exhaustion. A marvellous story is related on the authority of one Felix Plater: Several powerful men being commissioned to dance with a girl who had the dancing mania till she had recovered from her disorder, they successively relieved each other, and danced on for the space of four weeks! at the end of which time the patient fell down exhausted, was carried to an hospital, and there recovered. She had never once undressed, was entirely regardless of the pain of her lacerated feet, and had merely sat down occasionally to take some nourishment or to slumber, and even then “the hopping movement of her body continued.”

Happily, however, this mania grew more rare every year, so that in the beginning of the seventeenth century we may be said to be losing sight of it in Germany. Nor shall we follow out its history further in that country, because the same disorder, under a different form, made its appearance in Italy, and we must by no means neglect to notice the dancing mania which was so universally attributed to the bite of the tarantula. Whatever part the festival of St John the Baptist performed in Germany, as an exciter of the disease, that part was still more clearly performed in Italy by the popular belief in the venom of a spider.

We shall not go back with Dr Hecker into the fears or superstitions of classical times as to the bite of certain spiders or lizards; we must keep more strictly to our text; we must start from the period when men’s minds were still open to pain and alarm on account of the frequent return of the plague.

“The bite of venomous spiders, or rather the unreasonable fear of its
consequences, excited at such a juncture, though it could not have
done so at an earlier period, a violent nervous disorder, which, like
St Vitus’s dance in Germany, spread by sympathy, increasing in
severity as it took a wider range, and still further extending its
ravages from its long continuance. Thus, from the middle of the
fourteenth century, the furies of _The Dance_ brandished their scourge
over afflicted mortals; and music, for which the inhabitants of Italy
now probably for the first time manifested susceptibility and talent,
became capable of exciting ecstatic attacks in those affected, and
thus furnished the magical means of exorcising their melancholy.”

Does the learned doctor insinuate that the Italians owed their natural taste for music to this invasion of Tarantism?

“At the close of the fifteenth century we find that Tarantism had
spread beyond the boundaries of Apulia, and that the fear of being
bitten by venomous spiders had increased. Nothing short of death
itself was expected from the wound which these insects inflicted; and
if those who were bitten escaped with their lives, they were said to
be pining away in a desponding state of lassitude. Many became
weak-sighted or hard of hearing; some lost the power of speech; and
all were insensible to ordinary causes of excitement. Nothing but the
flute or the cithern afforded them relief. At the sound of these
instruments they awoke as if by enchantment, opened their eyes, and
moving slowly at first, according to the measure of the music, were,
as the time quickened, gradually hurried on to the most passionate
dance. It was generally observable that country people, _who were rude
and ignorant of music, evinced on these occasions an unusual degree of
grace_, as if they had been well practised in elegant movements of the
body; for it is a peculiarity in nervous disorders of this kind that
the organs of motion are in an altered condition, and are completely
under the control of the overstrained spirits.”

This increased agility and grace of movement is by no means to be discredited by the reader. It is a symptom which distinguishes one class of epileptic patients. Some have attributed it to an over-excitement of the cerebellum. However that may be, there are greater wonders than this contained in our most sober and trustworthy books on the disorders of the nervous system. We continue the account:—

“Cities and villages alike resounded throughout the summer season with
the notes of fifes, clarinets, and Turkish drums; and patients were
everywhere to be met with who looked to dancing as their only remedy.
Alexander ab Alexandro, who gives this account, saw a young man in a
remote village who was seized with a violent attack of Tarantism. He
listened with eagerness and a fixed stare to the sound of a drum, and
his graceful movements gradually became more and more violent, until
his dancing was converted into a succession of frantic leaps, which
required the utmost exertion of his whole strength. In the midst of
this overstrained exertion _of mind and body_ the music suddenly
ceased, and he immediately fell powerless to the ground, where he lay
senseless and motionless until its magical effect again aroused him to
a renewal of his impassioned performances.”

We have put the expression “mind and body” in italics, because we may as well take this opportunity to observe, that although convulsions of this kind are excited, and assume a certain form on account of the predominance of some idea, yet, when once called forth, they are almost entirely mechanical in their nature. Mere animal excitability—what is called the reflex action, or other automatic movements quite as little associated with the immediate operations of “mind”—carry on the rest of the process. And it is some consolation to think that the appearance of pain and distress which marks convulsive disorders of all descriptions, is, for the most part, illusory. The premonitory symptoms may be very distressing, but the condition of the patient, when the fit is on, is that of insensibility to pain.

The general conviction was, that by music and dancing the poison of the tarantula was distributed over the whole body, and expelled through the skin; but, unfortunately, it was also believed that if the slightest vestige of it remained behind the disorder would break out again. Thus there was no confidence excited in a perfect cure. Men who had danced themselves well one summer watched the next summer for the returning symptoms, and found in themselves what they looked for. Thus—

“The number of those affected by it increased beyond belief, for
whoever had actually been, or even fancied that he had been once
bitten by a poisonous spider or scorpion, made his appearance annually
whenever the merry notes of the Tarantella resounded. Inquisitive
females joined the throng and caught the disease—not indeed from the
poison of the spider, but from the mental poison which they eagerly
received through the eye; and thus the cure of the _Tarantati_
gradually became established as a regular festival of the populace.”

It was customary for whole bands of musicians to traverse Italy during the summer months, and the cure of the disordered was undertaken on a grand scale. This season of dancing and music was called “The women’s little carnival,” for it was women more especially who conducted the arrangements. It was they, too, it seems, who paid the musicians their fee. The music itself received its due share of study and attention. There were different kinds of the Tarantella (as the curative melody was called) suited to every variety of the ailment.

One very curious circumstance connected with this disease must not pass unnoticed—the passion excited by certain colours. Amongst the Germans, those afflicted by St Vitus’s dance were enraged by any garment of the colour of red. Amongst the Italians, on the contrary, red colours were generally liked. Some preferred one colour, some another, but the devotion to the chosen colour was one of the most extraordinary symptoms which the disease manifested in Italy. The colour that pleased the patient he was enamoured of; the colour that displeased excited his utmost fury.

“Some preferred yellow, others were enraptured with green; and
eyewitnesses describe this rage for colours as so extraordinary that
they can scarcely find words with which to express their astonishment.
No sooner did the patients obtain a sight of their favourite colour
than they rushed like infuriated animals towards the object, devoured
it with their eager looks, kissed and caressed it in every possible
way, and, gradually resigning themselves to softer sensations, adopted
the languishing expression of enamoured lovers, and embraced the
handkerchief, or whatever article it might be which was presented to
them, with the most intense ardour, while the tears streamed from
their eyes as if they were completely overwhelmed by the inebriating
impression on their senses.

“The dancing fits of a certain Capuchin friar in Tarentum excited so
much curiosity that Cardinal Cajetano proceeded to the monastery that
he might see with his own eyes what was going on. As soon as the monk,
who was in the midst of his dance, perceived the spiritual prince
clothed in his red garments, he no longer listened to the tarantella
of the musicians, but with strange gestures endeavoured to approach
the cardinal, as if he wished to count the very threads of his scarlet
robe, and to allay his intense longing by its odour. The interference
of the spectators, and his own respect, prevented his touching it, and
thus, the irritation of his senses not being appeased, he fell into a
state of such anguish and disquietude that he presently sunk down in a
swoon, from which he did not recover until the cardinal
compassionately gave him his cape. This he immediately seized in the
greatest ecstasy, and pressed, now to his breast, now to his forehead
and cheeks, and then again commenced his dance as if in the frenzy of
a love fit.”

Another curious symptom, which was probably connected with this passion for colour, was an ardent longing for the sea. These over-susceptible people were attracted irresistibly to the boundless expanse of the blue ocean, and lost themselves in its contemplation. Some were carried so far by this vague passionate longing as to cast themselves into the waves.

The persuasion of the inevitable and fatal consequences of being bitten by the tarantula was so general that it exercised a dominion over the strongest minds. Men who in their sober moments considered the disorder as a species of nervous affection depending on the imagination, were themselves brought under the influence of this imagination, and suffered from the disorder at the approach of the dreaded tarantula. A very striking anecdote of this kind is told of the Bishop of Foligno. Quite sceptical as to the venom of the insect, he allowed himself to be bitten by a tarantula. But he had not measured the strength of his own imagination, however well he had estimated the real malignancy of the spider. The bishop fell ill, nor was there any cure for him but the music and the dance. Many reverend old gentlemen, it is said, to whom this remedy appeared highly derogatory, only exaggerated their symptoms by delaying to have recourse to what, after all, was found to be the true and sole specific.

But even popular errors are not eternal. This of Tarantism continued, our author tells us, throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, but gradually declined till it became limited to single cases. “It may therefore be not unreasonably maintained,” he concludes, “that the Tarantism of modern times bears nearly the same relation to the original malady as the St Vitus’s dance which still exists, and certainly has all along existed, bears, in certain cases, to the original dancing mania of the dancers of St John.”

In a subsequent chapter, our author informs us that a disease of a similar character existed in Abyssinia, or still exists, for the authority he quotes is that of an English surgeon who resided nine years in Abyssinia, from 1810 to the year 1819. We cannot pretend to say that we have ever seen the book, which the learned German has, however, not permitted to escape him—we have never seen the _Life and Adventures of Nathaniel Pearce_, written by himself; but, judging by the extract here given, Nathaniel Pearce must be a person worth knowing, he writes with so much candour and simplicity. The disease is called in Abyssinia the Tigretier, because it occurs most frequently in the Tigrè country. The first remedy resorted to is the introduction of a learned Dofter, “who reads the Gospel of St John, and drenches the patient with cold water daily.” If this does not answer, then the relations hire a band of trumpeters, drummers, and fifers, and buy a quantity of liquor; all the young men and women of the place assemble at the patient’s house, and she (for it is generally a woman), arrayed in all the finery and trinkets that can be borrowed from the neighbours, is excited by the music to dance, day after day if necessary, till she drops down from utter exhaustion. The disease is attended with a great emaciation; and the doctor says “he was almost alarmed to see one nearly a skeleton move with such strength.” He then proceeds to recount his own domestic calamity in a strain of the most commendable candour:—

“I could not have ventured to write this from hearsay, nor could I
conceive it possible until I was obliged to put this remedy in
practice upon my own wife, who was seized with the same disorder. I at
first thought that a whip would be of some service, and one day
attempted a few strokes when unnoticed by any person, _we being by
ourselves_, and I having a strong suspicion that this ailment sprang
from the weak minds of women, who were encouraged in it for the sake
of the grandeur, rich dress, and music which accompany the cure. But
how much was I surprised, the moment I struck a light blow, thinking
to do good, to find that she became like a corpse; and even the joints
of her fingers became so stiff that I could not straighten them.
Indeed, I really thought that she was dead, and immediately made it
known to the people in the house that she had fainted, but did not
tell them the cause; upon which they immediately brought music, which
I had for many days denied them, and which soon revived her; and I
then left the house to her relations, to cure her at my expense. One
day I went privately with a companion to see my wife dance, and kept
at a short distance, as I was ashamed to go near the crowd. In looking
steadfastly upon her, while dancing or jumping, more like a deer than
a human being, I said that it certainly was not my wife; at which my
companion burst into a fit of laughter, from which he could scarcely
refrain all the way home.”

The capability of sustaining the most violent exercise, for a long time together, and on very little food, is not one of the least perplexities attendant upon these nervous or epileptic diseases. The partial suspension of sensation and volition, by sparing the brain, may have something to do with it. But into scientific perplexities of this kind we cannot now enter. One plain and homely caution is derivable from all these histories. Good sense is a great preservative of health. Do not voluntarily make a fool of yourself, or your folly may become in turn the master of your reason. Epilepsy has been brought on by the simulation of epilepsy. We doubt not that a man might dance to his own shadow, and talk to it, as it danced before him on the wall, till he drove himself into a complete frenzy. A sect in America thought fit to introduce certain grimaces, laughing, weeping, and the like, into their public service. It was not long before their grimaces, in some of their numbers, became involuntary; the muscles of the face had escaped the control of the will. A decided _tongue-mania_ was exhibited a short time amongst the Irvingites. Happily, in the present state of society, men’s minds are called off into so many directions, that a predominant idea of this kind has little chance of establishing itself in that tyrannous manner which we have seen possible in the middle ages. But it is better not to play with edged tools. If people will stand round a table, fixing their minds on one idea—that a certain mysterious influence will pass through their fingers to move the table—they will lose, for a time, the voluntary command over their own fingers, which will exert themselves without any volition or consciousness on their part. They are entering, in fact, into that state which, in the olden time, was considered a demoniacal possession; so that, speaking from this point of view, one may truly say that “Satan does turn the table,” but it is by entering into the table-turner. When we have been asked whether there is _anything_ in mesmerism, we have always answered—a great deal more than you ought, without medical advice, to make trial of. Nor do we at all admire the performance of the so-called electro-biologist. Experiments in the interest of science are permissible; but is it fit that any one should practise the art of inducing a temporary state of idiocy in persons of weak or susceptible nerves, for the purpose of collecting a crowd, and passing round the hat?

The subject of the third treatise of Dr Hecker is the _Sweating Sickness_. This third part is more miscellaneous than its predecessors, and we have no space to do justice to its varied and sometimes disputable matter. Dr Hecker describes the sweating sickness as a legacy left us by the civil wars of York and Lancaster. It first developed itself in Richmond’s army, which had been collected from abroad, over-fatigued by long marches in a very damp season, and probably ill supplied with rations. Its rapid extension through the cities he attributes to the intemperance of the English, to their overfeeding, and the want of cleanliness in their houses. Gluttony, and the filth of the rush-covered floors, he detects even amongst the wealthiest of the land. For a minute description of the disease, and the Doctor’s investigation into the nature of it, we must refer to the book itself.

On the physicians, and the manner in which they addressed themselves to the encounter of this strange calamity, there is a passage which it may be instructive to peruse:—

“The physicians could do little or nothing for the people in this
extremity. They are nowhere alluded to throughout this epidemic, and
even those who might have come forward to succour their
fellow-citizen, had fallen into the errors of Galen, and their
dialectic minds sank under this appalling phenomenon. This holds good
even of the famous Thomas Linacre, subsequently physician in ordinary
to two monarchs, and founder of the College of Physicians in 1518. In
the prime of his youth he had been an eyewitness of the events at
Oxford, and survived even the second and third eruption of the
sweating sickness; but in none of his writings do we find a single
word respecting this disease, which is of such permanent importance.
In fact, the restorers of the medical science of ancient Greece, who
were followed by all the most enlightened men in Europe, with the
single exception of Linacre, occupied themselves rather with the
ancient terms of art than with actual observation, and in their
critical researches overlooked the important events that were passing
before their eyes. This reminds us of the later Greek physicians, who
for four hundred years paid no attention to the smallpox, because they
could find no description of it in the immortal works of Galen!”

Who shall say, in reading such passages, that the _New Philosophy_ of Bacon, which reads now like old common-sense, was not sadly wanted, if the learned physician, while feeling his patient’s pulse, could see only with the eyes of Galen? In the fourteenth century we see the physician busied with his astrology, and laboriously fixing the day when Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, did battle with the sun over the great Indian Ocean; in the sixteenth we find him, with quite dialectic mind, absorbed in the study of his classical authorities; at the present time we may truly say that there are no inquiries conducted with a more philosophical spirit, or with greater zeal and energy, than those which relate to the human frame, its functions and its diseases. The extreme complexity of the subject renders our progress slow. And yet progress can hardly be said to have been slow. Let any one take up that admirable little manual on _The Nervous System_, by Dr Herbert Mayo, and compare it with any work a hundred years old: it is a new science; and that not only from the new facts which a Robert Bell and a Marshall Hall, and other distinguished men in France and Germany, have added to our knowledge, but from the fine spirit of philosophical inquiry which presides over the whole. We have not only left astrology behind, we have not only left behind the undue reverence to classical authority, but we have thrown aside that dislike and depreciation of physiology which the metaphysician had done his part to encourage, and have entered, as with a fresh eye and a beating heart, upon the study of the wonders of the human frame.

THE SONG OF METRODORUS.

Παντοίην βιότοιο τάμοις τρίβον. εἰν ἀγορῇ μέυ
κύδεα καὶ πινυταὶ πρήξιες. ἐυ δὲ δόμοις
ἄμπανμ’. ἐν δ’ἀγροῖς Φύσιος χάρις. ἐν δὲ ζαλάσση
κέρδος. ἐπὶ ξείνης, ἢν μὲν ἔχης τι, κλέος.
ν δ’ ἀπορὴς, μόνος οἶδας. ἔχεις γάμον; οἶκος ἄριστος
ἔσσεται. οὐ γαμέεις; ζης ἔτ’ ἐλαφρότερον.
τέκνα πόζος. ἄφροντις ἄπαμς βίος. αἱ νεότητες
ῥωμαλέαι. πολιαὶ δ’ ἔμπαλιν εὐσεβέες.
οὐκ ἄρα τῶν δισσῶν ἑνὸς αἵρεσις, ἢ τὸ γενέζαι
μηδέποτ’, ἢ τὸ ζανειν. πάντα γὰρ ἐσζλὰ βίῳ.

* * * * *

Metrodorus was a rare old blade,
His wine he drank, his prayers he said,
And did his duty duly;
But with grave affairs of Church and State
He never fretted his smooth pate,
For he said, and he said full truly,
If a man about and about will go,
To mend all matters high and low,
He’ll find no rest full surely.
In his chair of ease a thorn will grow,
The gall will in his bladder flow,
Thick seeds of sorrow he will sow,
And make his dearest friend a foe,
And go to the grave prematurely.
One day he sate beside the fire,
With all things square to his desire
—A wintry day, when Boreas blew
Through the piping hills with a halloo—
Just after dinner, when the wine
On the tip of his nose was glowing fine.
A pleasant vapour ’fore him floats,
The logs are blazing brightly,
And in his brain the happy thoughts
Begin to move full lightly.
He never wrote a verse before,
Though now he counted good threescore,
And scarcely knew what poets meant,
When in their high conceited bent
They talked of inspiration.
But now his soul a fancy stirred;
He trilled and chirped like any bird;
His bright imagination
Poured forth a pleasant flowing verse,
Which, if you please, I will rehearse
For gentle meditation.
’Twas Greek of course, but by the skill
Made English, of my classic quill,
As good, or better, if you will,
In this my free translation.

1.
They may rail at this world, and say that the devil
Rules o’er it, usurping the mace of the Lord;
In my soul I detest all such impious cavil,
While I sit as a guest at life’s bountiful board.
I was young; I am old, and my temples are hoary,
On Time’s rocking tide I have gallantly oared;
This wisdom I learned, ’tis the sum of my story,
With blessings God’s earth like a garner is stored.

2.
You blame your condition; by Jove I was never
So placed that I could not with pride be a man;
At rest or afloat on life’s far-sounding river,
Content was my watchword, enjoyment my plan.
Where busy men bustle, to elbow and jostle
What sport! then at home how delightful repose!
What comfort and pleasure your body to measure
At large in the elbow-chair, toasting your toes!

3.
A soldier? how gallant through smoke and through thunder
To ride like the lightning, when Jupiter roars;
A farmer? to gaze on the green leafy wonder
Of April how sweet, and to think on the stores
Of golden-sheaved autumn!—to dash through the billow
Is dear to the merchant who carries his gains;
How sweet to the poet on green grassy pillow,
To lie when spring zephyrs are fanning his brains!

4.
When you find a good wife, Nature urges to marry;
But art thou a bachelor, never complain;
Less sail you display, but less burden you carry,
And over yourself like a king you may reign.
’Tis pleasant to hear children prattling around you,
Thank Heaven you’ve arrows enough for your bow;
But if you love quiet, they’ll only confound you,
So if now you have none—may it ever be so!

5.
Art young? then rejoice in thy youth,—give the pinion
Of passion free play—love and hate like a man;
And gather around thee a mighty dominion
Of venturous thoughts, like the crest-waving van
Of a conquering host. Art old? reputation
And honour shall find thee and pleasures serene,
And a power like to Jove’s, when the fate of the nation
Shall wait on thy word in the hall of the queen.

6.
Blow hot or blow cold, with hearty endeavour
Still witch out a virtue from all that you see;
Use well what you get, giving thanks to the Giver,
And think everything good in its place and degree.
I’ve told you my thoughts, and I think you’re my debtor,
And if you don’t think so, I wish you were dead;
The sooner you rot on a dunghill the better,
You’re not worth the straw that they shake for your bed.

THE NEW REFORM BILL.

We feel compelled to address ourselves to an ungracious and disagreeable task. At this moment but one thought ought to be encouraged throughout the British empire—that of encountering and beating back the new and formidable aggressor on the liberties of Europe. We shall not enter now upon the history of past transactions. We shall not stop to inquire whether the Ministry acted foolishly or not in allowing themselves, in spite of repeated warnings and most pregnant instances, to be deceived, cajoled, and outwitted by the agents of Russian diplomacy. It is enough for us that the war has, to all intents and purposes, begun—that we are sending forth our armaments and making our preparations for such a struggle as has not been known during the lifetime of the present generation—and that we have, directly, the most colossal force in Europe to cope with, to which possibly may be united a central power of the Continent, with an army at its disposal more than twice as numerous as our own.

Gladly do we hail the spirit which at present animates the nation. It assures us that we have not degenerated during the long period of peace which we have enjoyed. It shows that we are still alive to our dignity as a people, to our duty as the enemies of outrage and aggression—that we have heart enough and will enough, at any sacrifice, to maintain our high position—and that the love of Mammon has not so occupied our souls as to render us insensible to the part which we are bound to take, as the freest state and most advanced community in Europe. We deny, on the part of the people of Great Britain, that they have either been rash or headstrong in this matter; they have submitted, with remarkable patience, to negotiations protracted beyond hope, and with advantage to the enemy; and, so far from being precipitate or impetuous towards war, they have urged nothing upon the Ministry until, after unparalleled vacillation, the latter have been compelled to see that no other course was open to them but a final rupture with Russia.