Tes iatrikes kartos, or, A treatise de morborum capitis essentiis & pronosticis adorned with above three hundred choice and rare observations ... / by Robert Bayfield ...

CAP. XXIV. De Chorea Lasciva.

LAsciva chorea, The Lascivious dance, is a malady, arising from a malign humor, with the which whosoever are taken, can do nothing but dance till they be dead, or cured.

This disease hath been very common in Ger∣many, as appears by those relations of Sckenkius, and Paracelsus, in his Book of madness, who brags how many several persons he hath cured of it.

'Tis strange to hear how long they will dance, and in what manner, over stools, forms, tables, even great bellied women sometimes (and yet never hurt their children) will dance so long that they can stir neither hand nor foot, but seem to be quite dead. Felix Platerus, de mentis alienatio∣ne, cap. 3. reports of a woman in Basil, whom he saw, that danced a whole month together.

Such as are taken with this malady cannot a∣bide or indure one in red clothes: But Musick above all things they love, and therefore the Ma∣gistrates in Germany will hire Musicians to play to them, and some lusty, sturdy companions, to dance with them. Next follow the Symptoms of more of the Internal senses.