Monday, October 12, 2009

Dancing Mania



A Scene from the Procession of Dancing Mania engraved by Hondius (1624) from a painting by Peter Brenghel, the elder. Bagpipe-players from part of the procession; their music helps to control the sturdy women who are struggling, or dancing, as it was called, in the grasp of the male attendants. The violent twisting of the neck is shown in the group to the left. In the background a woman partially recovered, but still under restraint, is being led across a bridge where, on the bank of the stream, is seated one of the women almost wholly restored to sanity, but still dazed and bewildered.

-from The Lame, The Halt, and The Blind, Howard W. Haggard, M.D., 1932

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