Word: vitus
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...accident a Manhattan physician. Dr. Lucy Du Bois Porter Sutton, 40, has discovered a quick palliative if not a certain cure for St. Vitus's Dance, hideous childhood disease. Victims twitch, quiver, quake and grimace uncouthly. The posturings resemble a grotesque dance like the oldtime "shimmy" and "Charleston." During the ignorant Middle Ages victims of the disease were taken to "dance" before images of St. Vitus, patron of comedians.* It was believed that those who danced before St. Vitus would be certain of good health during the following year. Hence the general name for the disease. The medical term...
Stephen Graham has written some delightful literature and he has published some tolerable history. Because he tried to combine the two he did a most unconvincing job in "St. Vitus Day." It lacks the vitality of romance and the dramatic accuracy of history. Characters which have heretofore been symbols of reaction for students or martyred heroes to laymen now become puppets in an author's plot...
...difficult to criticize "St. Vitus Day" from an historical point of view. The whole occurence is so involved and so fraught with controversy that any detailed criticism is worthless save from a student of the period. In many instances, however, the novel disagrees with the historical versions of Professor Fay or of Bernadotte Schmidt...
...causes and cures for the common cold physicians are skeptical. However, they believed Dr. Pfeiffer because of the wide range and thoroughness of his re-search in bacteriology, St. Vitus' Dance, pernicious anemia. . . . He, on the other hand, wanted to quiet all disbelief. He sent his research to Johns Hopkins University, where seven years ago he himself lectured on pathology, and which is now conducting a wide, deep, determined search into the cause of colds...