There was once a great conflux of people in Abdera, a city of the Greeks, at the acting of the tragedy of “Andromeda,” upon an extreme hot day; whereupon, a great many of the spectators falling into fevers had this accident from the heat, and from the tragedy together, that they did nothing but pronounce iambics, with the names of Perseus and Andromeda; which, together with the fever, was cured by the coming on of winter; and this madness was thought to proceed from the passion imprinted by the tragedy. Likewise there reigned a fit of madness in another Grecian city, which seized only the young maidens, and caused many of them to hang themselves. This was by most then thought an act of the devil. But one that suspected that contempt of life in them might proceed from some passion of the mind, and supposing that they did not contemn also their honour, gave counsel to the magistrates to strip such as so hanged themselves, and let them hang out naked. This, the story says, cured that madness. But on the other side, the same Grecians did often ascribe madness to the operation of Eumenides, or Furies; and sometimes of Ceres, Phoebus, and other gods; so much did men attribute to phantasms, as to think them aerial living bodies, and generally to call them spirits.