-St. Vitus. He is said to have been martyred about
303, and a body, reputed to be his, was transported to France in the
ninth century. It is said that just before he was killed he prayed that
all who would commemorate the day of his death should be protected from
the dancing mania. Whereupon a voice from heaven was heard to say,
"Vitus, thy prayer is accepted." The fact that the prayer was offered a
thousand years before the dancing mania appeared is a circumstance that
to the eye of faith merely heightened its value.

Within recent times epidemics of dancing have been more local, less
persistent, and of necessity not so public in their display, but nearly
always their appearance has been in connection with displays of
religious fervour. In most cases the dancing has tended more to a
species of 'jumping,' and--although this may be due to more careful
observation--has been accompanied by actions of a clearly epileptoid
nature. One of the most famous of these outbreaks was that of the French
Convulsionnaires, which lasted from 1727 to the Revolution. In 1727, a
popular, but half-crazy priest, Francois de Paris, died. During his life
Paris had fasted and scourged himself, lived in a hut that was seldom or
never cleansed, showed the same lack of cleanliness in his person, and
often went about half naked. Very shortly after his death, it was said
that miracles began to take place at his grave in the cemetery of St.
Medard. People gathered round the tomb day after day, and one young girl
was seized with convulsions. (She is called a girl in the narrative, but
she was a mature virgin of forty-two years of age.) Afterwards other
miracles followed in rapid succession. Some fell in fits, others
swallowed pieces of coal or flint, some were cured of diseases. From the
description of the behaviour of some of these devotees there seems to
have been a considerable amount of sexual feeling mixed up with the
display. Sometimes, we are told, those seized "bounded from the ground
like fish out of water; this was so frequently imitated at a later
period that the women and girls, when they expected such violent
contortions, not wishing to appear indecent, put on gowns made like
sacks, closed at the feet. If they received any bruises by falling down,
they were healed with earth taken from the grave of the uncanonised
saint. They usually, however, showed great agility in this respect; and
it is scarcely necessary to remark that the female sex