Amongst the consequences of the plague, Dr Hecker notices that the church acquired treasures and large properties in land, even to a greater extent than after the Crusades; and that, on the subsidence of the calamity, many entered the priesthood, or flocked to the monasteries, who had no other motive than to participate in this wealth. He adds, also, that,—
“After the cessation of the Black Plague, a greater fecundity in women was everywhere remarkable—a grand phenomenon, which, from its occurrence after every destructive pestilence, proves to conviction, if any occurrence can do so, the prevalence of a higher power in the direction of general organic life. Marriages were, almost without exception, prolific, and double and treble births were more frequent than at other times; under which head we should remember the strange remark, that after the ‘great mortality’ the children were said to have got fewer teeth than before; at which contemporaries were mightily shocked, and even later writers have felt surprise.
“If we examine the grounds of this oft-repeated assertion, we shall find that they were astonished to see children cut twenty, or at most twenty-two teeth, under the supposition that a greater number had formerly fallen to their share. Some writers of authority, as, for example, the physician Savonarola, at Ferrara, who probably looked for twenty-eight teeth in children, published their opinions on this subject. Others copied from them without seeing for themselves, as often happens in other matters which are equally evident; and thus the world believed in a miracle of an imperfection in the human body, which had been caused by the Black Plague.”
That a fresh impetus would be given to population seems to us quite sufficiently accounted for, without calling into aid any “higher power in the direction of general organic life.” Men and women would marry early; and the very fact of their having survived the plague would, in general, prove that they were healthy subjects, or had been well and temperately brought up. There would be the same impetus to population that an extensive emigration would cause, and an emigration that had carried away most of the sick and the feeble. The belief that double and treble births were more frequent than at other times, may perhaps be explained in the same manner as the belief that there were fewer teeth than before in the human head. No accurate observations had been at all made upon the subject.
We come next in order to The Dancing Mania—an epidemic of a quite different character. Not, indeed, as the name might imply, that the convulsive dance was a very slight affliction—it was felt to be quite otherwise; but because it belongs to that class of nervous maladies in which there is great room for mental or psychical influence. Such disorders spring up in a certain condition of the body, but the form they assume will depend on social circumstances, or the ideas current at the time. And thus Dr Hecker finds no difficulty in arranging the Convulsionnaires of France, or the early Methodists of England and Wales, in the same category as the maniacal dancers of Germany. It was in all the cases a physical tendency of a similar character, brought out under the influence of different ideas.
Dr Hecker mentions a case which, from the simplicity of the facts, would form a good introduction to others of a more complicated character. In the year 1787, at a cotton-manufactory at Hodden Bridge, in Lancashire, a girl put a mouse into the bosom of another girl, who had a great dread of mice. It threw her into a fit, and the fit continued, with the most violent convulsions, for twenty-four hours. On the following day three other girls were seized in the same way; on the day after six more. A report was now spread that a strange disease had been introduced into the factory by a bag of cotton opened in the house. Others who had not even seen the infected, but only heard of their convulsions, were seized with the same fits. In three days, the number of the sufferers had reached to twenty-four. The symptoms were, a sense of great anxiety, strangulation, and very strong convulsions, which lasted from one to twenty-four hours, and of so violent a nature that it required four or five persons to prevent the patients from tearing their hair, and dashing their heads against the floor and walls. Dr St Clare was sent for from Preston. Dr St Clare deserves to have his name remembered. The ingenious man took with him a portable electrical machine. The electric shock cured all his patients without an exception. When this was known, and the belief could no longer hold its ground that the plague had been brought in by the cotton bag, no fresh person was affected.
If we substitute for the cotton bag a belief in some demoniacal influence, compelling people to dance against their will, we have the dancing mania of Germany. Unhappily there was no St Clare at hand, with his electrical machine, to give a favourable shock to body and mind at once, and thus disperse the malady before it gathered an overpowering strength by the very numbers of the infected.
“The effects of the Black Death,” writes Dr Hecker (whose account of the disorder we cannot do better than give, with some abridgments), “had not yet subsided, when a strange delusion arose in Germany. 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. It was called the Dance of St John, or of St Vitus, on account of the Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterised, and which gave to those affected, whilst performing their wild dance, and screaming and foaming with fury, all the appearance of persons possessed. It did not remain confined to particular localities, but was propagated by the sight of the sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over the whole of Germany and the neighbouring countries to the north-west, which were already prepared for its reception by the prevailing opinions of the times.
“So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had come out of Germany, and who, united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public, both in the streets and in the churches, the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand in hand, and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in clothes, bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack. This practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany which followed these spasmodic ravings; but the bystanders frequently relieved patients in a less artificial manner, by thumping or trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing, they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits, whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open, and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations.”
The disease spread itself in two directions. It extended from Aix-la-Chapelle through the towns of the Netherlands, and also through the Rhenish towns. In Liege, Utrecht, and many other towns of Belgium, the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and their waists already girt with a cloth or bandage, that they might receive immediate relief on the attack of the tympany. It seems that the crowd around were often more ready to administer relief by kicks and blows than by drawing this bandage tight. The most opposite feelings seem to have been excited in the multitude by these exhibitions. Sometimes an idle and vicious mob would take advantage of them, and they became the occasion of much riot and debauchery. More frequently, however, the demoniacal origin of the disease, of which few men doubted, led to its being regarded with astonishment and horror. Religious processions were instituted on its account, masses and hymns were sung, and the whole power of the priesthood was called in to exorcise the evil spirit. The malady rose to its greatest height in some of the towns on the Rhine. At Cologne the number of the possessed amounted to more than five hundred, whilst at Metz the streets are said to have been filled (numbering women and children together) with eleven hundred dancers. Even those idle vagabonds who, for their own purposes, imitated their convulsive movements, assisted to spread the disorder; for in these maladies the susceptible are infected quite as easily by the imitation as by the reality.