serious interference: it took
some time, perhaps, for the theological leaders to understand that he
had "let a new idea loose upon the planet," but they soon understood it,
and their course was simple. For about fifty years the new idea was well
kept under; but in 1563 another physician, John Wier, of Cleves, revived
it at much risk to his position and reputation.(387)

(387) For Paracelsus, see Isensee, vol. i, chap. xi; also Pettigrew,
Superstitions connected with the History and Practice of Medicine and
Surgery, London, 1844, introductory chapter. For Wier, see authorities
given in my previous chapter.

Although the new idea was thus resisted, it must have taken some hold
upon thoughtful men, for we find that in the second half of the same
century the St. Vitus's dance and forms of demoniacal possession akin
to it gradually diminished in frequency and were sometimes treated as
diseases. In the seventeenth century, so far as the north of Europe is
concerned, these displays of "possession" on a great scale had almost
entirely ceased; here and there cases appeared, but there was no longer
the wild rage extending over great districts and afflicting thousands of
people. Yet it was, as we shall see, in this same seventeenth century,
in the last expiring throes of this superstition, that it led to the
worst acts of cruelty.(388)

(388) As to this diminution of widespread epidemic at the end of the
sixteenth century, see citations from Schenck von Grafenberg in Hecker,
as above; also Horst.

While this Satanic influence had been exerted on so great a scale
throughout northern Europe, a display strangely like it, yet strangely
unlike it, had been going on in Italy. There, too, epidemics of dancing
and jumping seized groups and communities; but they were attributed to
a physical cause--the theory being that the bite of a tarantula in
some way provoked a supernatural intervention, of which dancing was the
accompaniment and cure.

In the middle of the sixteenth century Fracastoro made an evident
impression on the leaders of Italian opinion by using medical means in
the cure of the possessed; though it is worthy of note that the medicine
which he applied successfully was such as we now know could not by
any direct effects of its own accomplish any cure: whatever effect it
exerted was wrought upon the imagination of the sufferer. This form of
"possession," then, passed out of the supernatural domain, and
be