Choreomania, an historical sketch : with some account of an epidemic observed in Madagascar / by Andrew Davidson.

  • Davidson, Andrew, 1836-1918.
Date:
1867
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Choreomania, an historical sketch : with some account of an epidemic observed in Madagascar / by Andrew Davidson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Amongst the epidemics of the Middle Ages, one of the most peculiar, and to the psychologist one of the most interesting, is the dancing- mania wliich, for at least two centuries and a half, appeared at irregular intervals in various parts of Europe. It received different names in different countries. Throughout Western Europe it was called chorea, chorea Sancti Viti, choreademonomaida, the devil’s dance, or the dance of St John; while in Italy, in more modern times, it was known as tarantism. The same disease has been observed in Abyssinia about the beginning of the present century, where it was called tigretier. It is not my design to give a full account of this malady in its various epidemics, but simply to sketch some of its leading historical features, for without some acquaintance with its history, the following narrative of what was observed in Madagascar, would be imperfectly understood. This disease, which we shall name Choreomania, was, as I have said, originally called chorea, or Saint Vitus’s dance j but these terms are now inseparably, though inaptly, applied to another and perfectly distinct nervous affection. From this change in name, along with the disappearance of the original chorea from Europe, considerable confusion has arisen. Not a few authors have regarded the descriptions of choreomania by the older Avriters as applying to modern chorea, and as these are entirely inconsistent -with our everyday experience of the latter disease, they have considered the accounts of the epidemics of choreo- mania during the Middle Ages as extravagant and untrustworthy. The short allusion which Mason Good has made to the original disea.se in his classic work^ indicates that he had fallen into this error. In a similar way, that prince of modern physicians, Joseph Frank, proceeding upon the assumption that choreomania is identical with chorea, says,—“ Those who pretend that in 1374 chorea be- came epidemic, evidently confound it with the cereal malady {errjolism). In tnith, however, chorea does not exhibit itself generally in an epidemic form, but, with some exceptions, is always sporadic.”* Now, it is perhaps possible that one of the forms of ergotism may be liable to be mistaken for the chorea of modem nosologists; it could not have been confounded with choreomania, with which it has nothing in common. It is suffi- cient, however, to say that no one maintains that the disease referred to by Joseph Frank was epidemic in 1374. In one of ' F)r Good’s Study of Mediciiif!. dtli edition. Vol. iii. p. F«V/e Practice of Medicine. Hy Josepli Frank. Art. Chorea.