SECT. 6--DECLINE AND TERMINATION OF THE DANCING PLAGUE
About this time the St. Vitus's dance began to decline, so that
milder forms of it appeared more frequently, while the severer
cases became more rare; and even in these, some of the important
symptoms gradually disappeared. Paracelsus makes no mention of
the tympanites as taking place after the attacks, although it may
occasionally have occurred; and Schenck von Graffenberg, a
celebrated physician of the latter half of the sixteenth century,
speaks of this disease as having been frequent only in the time of
his forefathers; his descriptions, however, are applicable to the
whole of that century, and to the close of the fifteenth. 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.
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