Many
persons, besides suffering from the convulsions, became the
subjects of violent pain, which required the assistance of their
brethren of the faith. On this account they, as well as those who
afforded them aid, were called by the common title of Secourists.
The modes of relief adopted were remarkably in accordance with
those which were administered to the St. John's dancers and the
Tarantati, and they were in general very rough; for the sufferers
were beaten and goaded in various parts of the body with stones,
hammers, swords, clubs, &c., of which treatment the defenders of
this extraordinary sect relate the most astonishing examples in
proof that severe pain is imperatively demanded by nature in this
disorder as an effectual counter-irritant. The Secourists used
wooden clubs in the same manner as paviors use their mallets, and
it is stated that some Convulsionnaires have borne daily from six
to eight thousand blows thus inflicted without danger. One
Secourist administered to a young woman who was suffering under
spasm of the stomach the most violent blows on that part, not to
mention other similar cases which occurred everywhere in great
numbers.
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