On this matter, however, we cannot decide, since our only object
here is to point out the origin of a political means of protection
against a disease which has been the greatest impediment to
civilisation within the memory of man; a means that, like Jenner's
vaccine, after the small-pox had ravaged Europe for twelve hundred
years, has diminished the check which mortality puts on the
progress of civilisation, and thus given to the life and manners
of the nations of this part of the world a new direction, the
result of which we cannot foretell.
THE DANCING MANIA
CHAPTER I--THE DANCING MANIA IN GERMANY AND THE NETHERLANDS
SECT. 1--ST. JOHN'S DANCE
The effects of the Black Death had not yet subsided, and the
graves of millions of its victims were scarcely closed, when a
strange delusion arose in Germany, which took possession of the
minds of men, and, in spite of the divinity of our nature, hurried
away body and soul into the magic circle of hellish superstition.
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.
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