St Vitus’s dance

Use in the book

The preliminary classification puts the dance among the conditions associated with disordered imagination or reason and then among the named varieties of fury. Its full description emphasizes movement that sufferers cannot stop, sometimes until death or cure. The following paragraph makes this startlingly concrete: dancing over furniture, eventual inability to move, aversion to red clothes, and a love of music. Magistrates are said to hire musicians and strong companions to dance with them. These are reports of a collective practice, not evidence that the patients simply choose an unusually vigorous recreation.

The passage’s certainty is uneven. The body says sufferers who dance at the saint’s place are “certainly freed,” but the marginal ut plurimum says “usually.” The next paragraph also speaks of Paracelsus as one who “brags” of his cures, and cites Plater’s report of a woman dancing for a month. Burton can transmit an emphatic cure claim, qualify it in a margin and use distancing language about a claimant within a very short span. These differences should not be smoothed into either wholehearted credulity or a complete dismissal.

The same paragraph says that Arabian physicians class it as “a kinde of Palsie.” That label belongs to a historical arrangement of disorders of movement; it does not cancel the preceding description of sustained dancing. Burton then points to Bodin and Monavius for further accounts. When he later praises music’s therapeutic power, Bodin again supplies the claim that the “S. Vitus Bedlam dance” is treated by music. Bedlam marks the dance as mad or frenzied; it is not a statement that the treatment takes place at the London hospital.

The religious discussion changes the argumentative setting. Burton asks whether prayer to saints and sacred objects can help, then reports Catholic claims of cures at St Vitus and other shrines. His catalogue assigns St Vitus to mad people and Valentine to falling sickness. The distinction matters both for reading the saint-name and for resisting the assumption that every disorder in the list is epilepsy. What looked like a medical description is now evidence within a polemical debate about authorized sources of healing.

Related entries

Dancing and Music and harmony retain the broader recreational and therapeutic discussions. Madness owns the larger classification. Compare Palsy (Palsy) and Epilepsy and falling sickness (Epilepsy and falling sickness), without equating their historical categories.

Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.

Places to read

1. Subsection 3. Classification of Diseases of the Head · paragraph 15The dance in the classification of impaired imagination and reason.
2. Subsection 4. Mental Impairment, Frenzy, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropy, St Vitus’s Dance and Ecstasy · paragraph 24Its place among the named forms of fury.
3. Subsection 4. Mental Impairment, Frenzy, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropy, St Vitus’s Dance and Ecstasy · paragraph 35Names, visitation of the saint, and the discrepancy between certainly and usually.
4. Subsection 4. Mental Impairment, Frenzy, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropy, St Vitus’s Dance and Ecstasy · paragraph 36The described movements and magistrates’ employment of musicians. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
5. Subsection 4. Mental Impairment, Frenzy, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropy, St Vitus’s Dance and Ecstasy · paragraph 37Reported duration, cure claims and classification as a palsy. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
6. Member 3. Whether It Is Lawful to Seek the Saints' Help in This Disease · paragraph 22The explicit question about saints and sacred remedies. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
7. Member 3. Whether It Is Lawful to Seek the Saints' Help in This Disease · paragraph 23St Vitus among the shrines credited with cures.
8. Member 3. Whether It Is Lawful to Seek the Saints' Help in This Disease · paragraph 25St Vitus and Valentine given different patronage assignments.
9. Subsection 3 Music as a Remedy · paragraph 15The Bedlam-dance phrase and Bodin’s music claim.
10. C · paragraph 100The original Table provides a Latin-headword retrieval route.

In this edition

In the classifications, the modern column translates Chorus sancti Viti as “St Vitus’s dance.” It instead retains the Latin and follows it with the modernized English alias. The later Bedlam dance becomes “mad dance.” It reads the original “taken from it” as “seized by it,” an explicit repair noted by the editor. The modern wording of the first sentence adds “is so named because,” which can blur the distinction between Paracelsus’s characterization and the next sentence’s explanation of the saint-name. Read both sentences together rather than deriving the complete name merely from incessant movement. The note on the later music passage also corrects Burton’s apparent appeal to Augustine for Timotheus: the cited chapter concerns David and harmony, not that musician.

Chorus sancti Viti; S. Vitus dance

St Vitus’s dance, the named historical dancing disorder.

Original wording: “Chorus sancti Viti, or S. Vitus dance”

Modern wording: “Chorus sancti Viti, or St Vitus’s dance”

The parallel labels identify the same disorder. Burton explains the saint-name by a reported practice of seeking help at the saint’s place of veneration, not by a demonstrated modern disease mechanism. Lookup: Chorus sancti Viti; Chorus sancti viti; S. Vitus dance; St Vitus’s dance; Saint Vitus’s dance.

the lascivious dance

Paracelsus’s characterization of the compulsive dancing.

Original wording: “the lascivious dance, Paracelsus cals it”

Modern wording: “Paracelsus calls it the lascivious dance”

The adjective retains its charged characterization; the following description concerns incessant dancing, not a separately narrated sexual act. The marginal Lascivam Choream gives the Latin phrase behind the characterization. Lookup: lascivious dance; Lascivam Choream [marginal form, the accompanying note].

ut plurimum

Usually, for the most part.

Original wording: “Eventu ut plurimum rem ipsam comprobante”

Note translation: “The outcome usually confirming the fact itself”

This qualification is narrower than the body’s “certainly freed.” It is a materially important limit on the reported success of the visit and dancing, not an ornamental Latin aside. Lookup: ut plurimum; usually.

S. Vitus Bedlam dance

The mad or frenzied dance of Saint Vitus.

Original wording: “S. Vitus Bedlam dance”

Modern wording: “the mad dance of Saint Vitus”

Bedlam functions as a characterization of the dance. Bodin is the authority for the local claim of musical treatment; the expression does not locate the case in Bethlem hospital. Lookup: Bedlam dance; S. Vitus Bedlam dance.

furorem Sancti Viti

The frenzy of Saint Vitus, referring to the named dancing disorder.

Original wording: “Curat Musica furorem Sancti Viti”

Note translation: “Music cures the frenzy of Saint Vitus”

Musica is the grammatical subject of the cure claim, and furorem its object. The saint-name identifies the disorder; the sentence does not say that Saint Vitus personally performs the musical treatment. Lookup: furor Sancti Viti [dictionary access form]; furorem.