Vitus's Dance Research Articles

Atypical presentation of rheumatic fever

Sydenham Chorea (St. Vitus dance) occurs in about 10-15% of children with acute rheumatic fever. Herein, we present the case of a 5-year-old male child with hemichorea and arthralgia. The child also presented with mild mitral regurgitation and mild aortic regurgitation. Appropriate management is essential to prevent mortality, morbidity, and psychosocial disability in such cases. We would also like to shed light on the challenges faced in the management of chorea in young children with key emphasis on the anticipation of adverse reactions to commonly used medications.

Chapter 3 - Neurologic complications of rheumatic fever

Sydenham chorea, also known as St. Vitus dance, is a major clinical criterion for the diagnosis of acute rheumatic fever. Clinically, it results in a combination of movement disorders and complex neuropsychiatric symptoms. Cardiac damage due to rheumatic fever may also predispose to neurologic complications later in life. Rheumatic heart disease (RHD) is associated with heart remodeling, cardiac arrhythmias, and ischemic stroke. Furthermore, chronically damaged heart valves are predisposed to infection. Septic brain embolism, a known complication of infective endocarditis, may result in brain ischemia, hemorrhage, and spread of the infection to the brain.

Secrets, lies, and disguise: The case of andy warhol.

The life and works of the great American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987) are examined in the context of Warhol's compulsive and often gratuitous lying. Elements of early trauma-contracting St. Vitus Dance at age of 7, his father's death at age of 13, and the abject poverty in which he grew up as the son of immigrants-are viewed as central antecedents of his deceptiveness. The relevance of these dynamics to the clinical situation is examined.

Chorea: A Journey through History.

The original descriptions of chorea date from the Middle Ages, when an epidemic of “dancing mania” swept throughout Europe. The condition was initially considered a curse sent by a saint, but was named “Saint Vitus’s dance” because afflicted individuals were cured if they touched churches storing Saint Vitus’s relics. Paracelsus coined the term chorea Sancti Viti and recognized different forms of chorea (imaginativa, lasciva, and naturalis). In the 17th century, Thomas Sydenham provided an accurate description of what he termed chorea minor. He also described rheumatic fever but did not associate it with chorea. It was only in 1850 that See established a relationship between chorea and rheumatic disease. A connection with cardiac involvement was soon recognized and in 1866 Roger postulated that chorea, arthritis, and heart disease had a common cause. The last quarter of the 19th century is marked by the works of Jean-Martin Charcot, Silas Weir Mitchell, William Osler, and William Richard Gowers, all of paramount importance in the refinement of the definition of chorea, its causes, and differential diagnosis. In 1841, Charles Oscar Waters gave a concise account of a syndrome, likely to be Huntington’s disease (HD), later described further by George Huntington and named after him. In 1955, the Venezuelan physician Americo Negrette published a book describing communities in the State of Zulia in Venezuela, with unusual numbers of individuals with chorea. Negrette’s works culminated in the creation of the Venezuela project and the subsequent discovery of seminal findings in HD. We review the historical facts and outstanding physicians that mark both HD and Sydenham’s chorea’s history in various sections.

Neurological implications and neuropsychological considerations on folk music and dance.

Neurological and neuropsychological aspects of folk music and traditional dance have been poorly investigated by historical and scientific literature. Some of these performances could be indeed the manifestation of latent pathological conditions or the expression of liberation rituals. This chapter aimed at analyzing the relationships between traditional dance, folk music, and neurological and psychiatric disorders. Since ancient times, dance has been used in the individual or collective as treatment of some diseases, including epilepsy and movement disorders (dyskinesia, chorea, etc.). Dionysia in Ancient Greece, St. Vitus dance in the Middle Age, tarantism and other traditional dances of southern Italy and of non-Western countries might be credited as curative rituals of these neurological and psychiatric conditions. During the nineteenth century, dance was also used for the treatment of psychiatric patients; the relationship between dance and insanity could also be reflected in classical ballets and music of that period. Nowadays, neuropsychiatric manifestations could also be evidenced in modern dances (mass fainting at rock concerts, flash mobs); some ballroom dances are commonly used for the rehabilitation of patients suffering from neurodegenerative and psychiatric conditions. Interdisciplinary research on these subjects (ethnomusicology and cultural anthropology, clinical neurology and dynamic psychology, neuroradiology and neurophysiology, and socioneurology and neuromusicology) should be increased.

Before and AfterandSuperman

When 8-year-old Andy Warhol made odd shaking movements in school, hewas teased andbulliedbyhis peers.When the movements persisted and worsened, he received a diagnosis of Sydenham chorea (historically known as St. Vitus dance), an autoimmune complication of group A β-hemolytic streptococcal infection2,3; it is a neurological variant of rheumatic fever. InWarhol’s childhood, it affected about 20% of children who, like Warhol himself, had received an earlier diagnosis of scarlet fever. Although Warhol (born August 6, 1928) recalls 3 episodes during the summermonths (first epigraph), only 1 episode (with a relapse) is documented; it kept him out of school for about 8 weeks. As his movements resolved, his mother gave him comic books and movie magazines to look at, and she read to him and fed him Campbell’s Soup.Theyoungestof 3brothers,AndyWarholwasa frail child with a protective mother; the chorea made the family even more attentive tohim.Hebecameenamoredwithmovie stars and comic book heroes, particularly Popeye and Dick Tracy. Lying in bed with his Charlie McCarthy doll (first epigraph), he dreamed of becoming a movie star or hero. In 1938, a new breedof comic bookhero, the superhero, appeared in the first issue of Action Comics. Mild mannered Clark Kent’s transformationtoSupermanwasparticularlyappealing tochildren, like Warhol, who were anxious and insecure.4 Warholwaspreoccupiedwithhis physical appearance.He hadadermatological condition,probablyvitiligo,withblotchy skin, and apparently rosacea that left his nose red and enlarged. His physician noted thatWarhol had small hemangiomas on his scrotum, which were another source of embarrassment.3 It boosted his self-esteemwhen hismother tookhim for freedrawing lessonsonSaturdaymornings at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.2 Warhol’sparentsweredevoutByzantineCatholicswho immigrated to Pittsburgh from Eastern Europe. Andy attended church services each Sunday and sat before the iconostasis, a wall of icons and religious paintings meant to bring the believer face to face with a timeless spiritual presence. He was inneedof suchsupport.His fatherhadacholecystectomywith complicationsand laterbecameseverely jaundicedafterdrinking contaminated water on a job; he died at 53 years of age, whenAndywas 13yearsof age.Twoyears later, hismotherunderwent emergency surgery for colon cancerwith a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. Her convalescence took its toll too. Funds his father set aside for his education allowedAndy to enroll at the Carnegie Institute School of Technology. He graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1949 and immediatelymoved toNewYork,where his career as a commercial artist took off. Within 10 years, he was the leading commercial artist in New York City.

Dances with Darwin, 1875–1910: Vernacular Modernity in France by Rae Beth Gordon

MLR, 105.3, 2010 877 and 1890s. The role of Le Figaro inRodenbach's career is particularly significant, since itoffered a stage upon which he could initially reveal his journalistic and, later,his literary talent, through the form of thefeuilleton?%. strategy also adopted by Zola and Barbey d'Aurevilly. In 1892, having written a number of articles for the paper, he published Bruges-la-morte as a feuilleton to popular and critical success. From the perspective of nineteenth-century studies, Rodenbach's texts on literature and painting are, as Gorceix states, significant in the first instance because they offerus 'les impressions, les reactions, prises sur le vif, d'un temoin direct de son epoque' (p. 27). Based mainly on artists and writers living in Paris, essays on Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme, and les Goncourts are accompanied by those on regional writers such asMistral and Brizeux, while the articles on artists are equally wide-ranging, including Rodin, Puvis de Chavannes, Monet, Carriere, and Raffaelli. Rodenbach's admiration for and friendship with many of thewriters and artists he chooses precludes criticism of their shortcomings, yet his perceptive analysis ofMallarme and Rodin, for example, reveals his talent as a critic and in particular for disseminating an understanding of theirwork to a less cultured public. His description of the former's poetic language is telling: cDonc lesmots se taisent; le poete ne les considere plus que comme des signes qui, par la contexture, par la place occupee, par leurmariage avec tel autre precedemment hai, evoquent des sensations vierges, des sens imprevus' (p. 189). Rodenbach's article on Rodin is equally incisive and pedagogical, explaining how he reinvented sculpture through 'la grande loi de la nature [qu'il] a appliquee a toutes ses figures, qui en tirent leur supreme accent de vie' (p. 256). In terms of Rodenbach's own oeuvre, the annex of his writings on Flanders, destined for a Parisian public, is also illuminating. On the one hand, the themes and images ofmisted landscapes, mystical abbeys, and silentmedieval towns recall those of his literary texts; on the other, however, these are self-sufficientand absorbing travel guides which conjure up the exoticism of Rodenbach's native land. Gorceix's edition of Rodenbach's texts thus offers a welcome addition not only to the study of the writer himself, but also to the dissemination and reception of thework of his contemporaries, as well as to the field of nineteenth-century travel literature. Queen's University Belfast Claire Moran Dances with Darwin, 1875-1910: Vernacular Modernity inFrance. By Rae Beth Gordon. Farnham: Ashgate. 2009. 311pp. ?60. ISBN 978-0-7546-5243-4. Dances with Darwin picks up where Rae Beth Gordon's wittily entitled and en grossing Why theFrench Love Jerry Lewis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001) leftoff.An erstwhile performer herself in Paris cafes-concerts, she extends her research here intovarious forms of show-business grotesquerie (inmusic halls, circuses, fairgrounds, and exhibitions), and links these suggestively to the conco mitant phenomenon of (simplistic) exploitation ofDarwin's theories of evolution: in short, the nineteenth-century obsession with the human zoo, typified outside 878 Reviews France by Barnum and the spectacles he made of freaks. Gordon concentrates on three decades and a bit of French popular culture. In her own words: 'The convergence of primitivism with nervous pathology (e.g. epilepsy or hysteria) in the fin-de-siecle music-hall is a vernacular modernity thatprecedes the same shock inHigh Art by three decades' (p. 4). Stereotyped Darwinism was made familiar to the public not only by the popular press but also by popular entertainers. In effect, Gordon's theme is the numerous ways inwhich, like slang, cultural phenomena filtersocially upwards. Despite or because ofwidespread fears of rampant regression and degeneration (a reverse evolution), audiences responded oftenmimetically to the staged displays of chanteuses epileptiques', a kind of St Vitus's dance thatGordon likens to the pelvic gyrations of Elvis Presley a half-century or so later.The famous dancer Jane Avril was a hysteric patient at La Salpetriere mental hospital, where she discovered her vocation; Sarah Bernhardt less riskily studied alleged hysteria in preparation for a stage part. Maurice Chevalier started his career as a comique idiot. There...

Chemical Investigation of Scutellaria lateriflora L.

Scutellaria lateriflora L. (Skullcap) is a perennial member of the mint family which grows in North American and is cultivated in Europe. As a folk medicine, the dried aerial parts of this plant are used as a sedative/nerve tonic as well as an antispasmodic to treat epilepsy, St. Vitus's dance, insomnia, anxiety, neuralgia and withdrawal symptoms from barbiturates and tranquilizers [1]. Despite its extensive use, little data exist regarding the chemical constituents of S. lateriflora. In order to provide scientific support for the uses of this plant, a systematical chemical study has been conducted. From the aerial parts of S. ateriflora, six flavonoids including wogonin, oroxylin A, dihydrooroxylin A, chrysin, dihydrochrysin, and 5,7-dihydroxy-2ʹ,8-dimethoxyflavone, four triterpenoids including lupenol, ursolic acid, 3α,24-dihydroxyolean-12-en-28-oic acid, 3β,19-dihydroxyursolic acid, as well as sitosterol, daucosterol, palmitic acid, a mixture of arachidic acid, behenic acid, and lignoceric acid in the ratio of 2:1:0.3, mixture of 1-triacontanol and 1-dotriacontanol in the ratio of 2:1, have been isolated. Their structures were determined on the basis of 1D, 2D-NMR and comparison with reported data. All these compounds except wogonin and chrysin are reported for the first time from this species. Acknowledgement: This work is funded in part by the Food Drug Administration contract “Biotanical Dietary Supplement: Science-Base for Authentication” 2 U01 FD 002071-06.

Chorea and community in a nineteenth-century town.

The dominant historical narrative of Huntington's disease (Huntington's chorea) has portrayed the early American sufferers from this disorder as marginalized and vilified. This article argues, however, that afflicted families in East Hampton, New York--the site of George Huntington's mid-nineteenth-century observations--were mostly accepted and integrated within the community, some of them as members of the gentry and active participants in local governance. As descendants of early English settlers in this multiracial town, these white Presbyterian families, some of whose members were afflicted with what was locally called "St. Vitus's dance" or "that disorder," were always defined as "one of ours." While this fatal inherited neurological illness became more secret and hidden toward the end of the nineteenth century, this article suggests that it was larger cultural and social changes, rather than factors intrinsic to the disease, that led to the shift. The East Hampton story suggests the ways in which specific historical circumstances in a community may shape the-social meanings of even so severe a disease as Huntington's, and that social integration of the afflicted families may have helped mitigate the suffering of the disease.

Dramatizing the Failure to Jump the Culture/Nature Gap: The Films of Peter Greenaway

Dramatizing the Failure to Jump the Culture/Nature Gap: The Films of Peter Greenaway Vernon Gras (bio) Peter Greenaway’s films share the absurdist premises of Beckett and Pinter but not their minimalist understatement and choked up silences. He likes to do “talkie” films and stuffs them as full of information and citations of past culture as the film’s problem or conflict will allow. Similar to other postmodern artists whose works are informed by the current “loss of center,” Greenaway’s films are filled with quotes and allusions to the cultural monuments of the past in architecture, painting, sculpture, landscape, scientific theory, religion, and myth. He has been criticized by some as an elitist for the heavy load of intellectual freight his films carry. But many critical reactions to his work have been profuse in their admiration of its multilayered richness. 1 In an interview with Joel Siegel in City Paper (April 6, 1990), Greenaway argues that his many cultural allusions are not affectation. Rather, he feels, they help in the development of an introspective approach to film making. He grants that cinema must be realistic, that is, reproduce the external world, but it must also render a multilayer of metaphorical meaning. Thus, Greenaway’s films are far richer in their mise-en-scène than in montage. More attention is given to how a particular scene is framed and shot than to fast cuts, changing camera angles, and the suspenseful development of a story line. The latter he contemptuously refers to as “the Hollywood cinema” and a “St. Vitus Dance use of the camera.” 2 In defending his financially successful The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover from being a Hollywood sellout, Greenaway asserted that “this is a metaphorical film. There’s no way that the American cinema ever deals in metaphor. The only decent metaphorical filmmaker you have here is David Lynch. Americans don’t understand what metaphor in cinema is about. They’re extremely good at making straightforward, linear narrative movies which entertain superbly. But they very rarely do anything else. The whole purpose of my cinematic effort is to explore metaphor and symbol.” 3 It is precisely this thick visual and verbal texture in his films that induces pleasurable anticipation in his followers and perhaps contributes more to the viewer’s interpretive interest than do the storyline of his [End Page 123] characters. With confirmed regularity, Greenaway places his dramatic conflicts into a thick cultural tapestry whose allegorical meanings and oppositions, though enlivened by the surface activities of his characters, usually do more for his films than does the plot. I’m looking for ways of structuring films that coexist with my thematic material but that also have their own identities and interest. In some ways my films are more satisfactorily explained by the esthetic one brings to painting than to movies. The sense of distance and contemplation they require has much more to do with painting. When you go into an art gallery you don’t emote, by and large, like people do in the movies. I know my work is accused of being cool and intellectually exhibitionistic. But I’m determined to get away from that manipulated, emotional response that you’re supposed to have to Hollywood cinema. 4 The recurring allegory, metaphor, or subtext in all his films, underlying their more immediate and superficial action, is the inevitable failure of whatever ordering principles his protagonists engage in. The same self-awareness and reflexivity about their art found in writers like Borges, Calvino, Barth, and Pynchon, find thematic and cinematographic expression in Greenaway. On more than one occasion, Greenaway has admitted fondness for Borges, Calvino, Smollett, and their influence on his work. 5 Like many postmodern writers, Greenaway makes the creative process itself the main issue in his films. It is human creativity, the artistic activity itself—meaning giving—that functions sub voce as the hero. Excluding Prospero’s Books, Greenaway’s major films have depicted this theme as serious actions in a tragic mode. Beginning with The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) and continuing unabated through A Zed and Two Noughts (1985), Belly of an Architect (1987), Drowning by Numbers (1988...

The Solution of the Sherman Paradox or the Successful Search for the Huntington Gene

With the help of reverse genetics the gene whose changes cause Huntington chorea, also known as St. Vitus's dance, was identified from a 500 000 base‐pair sequence of the short arm of chromosome 4 several months ago. This rare hereditary disease usually breaks out between the ages of 35 and 50, and is characterized by disturbances of the motor and neural systems, and inevitably leads to death. The genetic reason appears to be repetitions of a certain base triplet; the greater their number, the earlier the disease breaks out. How this “molecular disease” was tracked down is described in an intelligible and absorbing way.

The Story of Oxala (The Feast of Bomfim)

Zora Zeijan CHARACTERS: EKEDE: nurse to Oxala; she also plays Baba, the old Bahian woman at the beginning of the play LAOS: two young women who alsd play the "daughters of the saint." THREE SERVANTS OF XANGO: they also play the part of the lame ones: a cripple, a man who shakes with St. Vitus's dance and who also has bronchocele, and a hunchback. OXALA: an old man with a long white beard; the retainer of all powers. BABALORIXA: a soothsayer from Oxala's house. OXAGUIAN: Oxala's eldest son. EXU: the protector of the roads; Oxala's youngest son. OXUM: "iaba" (goddess) of beauty; Xango's wife. NANAN: the queen of the deep waters; Oxala's wife. XANGO: The god of thunder. AIRA: Xango's son. ABIODUM AND OLUGBAN: Xango's old ministers. In the background is the church of Bomfim with its doors opening on to a terrace; this terrace is at the top of a stair which is broken in the middle by a wide step which constitutes the second level. It continues as far as the first level (foreground) where there is an empty space. The terrace is the third level. There are lateral exits from all levels. Upon this basic setting the following effects must be created: Act I A Same as above. B A curtain hides the church in order to change the setting to a room in Oxala's white Palace. C A road is suggested on the first level by means of lighting. D Nanan's bedroom in Xango's palace. Act II A Nanan's bedroom in Xango's palace. B The road. C Reception room in Xango's palace. Act 111 AReception room in Xango's palace. B The road. C Inside of a temple. D -Same as in Act I: the church of Bomfim with its doors open on to the terrace. Note: It is important to maintain the idea of the stairs whatever the setting is, for the play aims at establishing a connection between the legend of Oxala and the washing of the Church of Bomfim.

Sydenham's chorea.

RHEUMATIC chorea is named for Thomas Sydenham, who first described this disorder and mistakenly called it St. Vitus's dance. St. Vitus's dance was actually an entirely separate phenomenon. During the Middle Ages, in a setting of widespread religious mysticism, ignorance, and superstition, mass outbreaks of wild emotional dancing occurred throughout Europe. The victims were frequently brought to the chapels of St. Vitus, a Sicilian boy who had been martyred in the year 303 during the persecution of the Christians by Diocletian. St. Vitus thus became the patron saint of those afflicted with the dancing mania.1 .... So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle who had come out of Germany, and who, united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the churches the following strange spectacle.... They formed circles hand in hand, and appearing

St. Vitus's Dance. Presidential Address by Dudley M. Pruitt

St. Vitus's Dance. Presidential Address by Dudley M. Pruitt

Unknown Papua

SOME further particulars of the hitherto unknown people found in Papua by Mr. J. G. Hides (see NATURE, August 17, p. 251) are given in extracts from the official report and an article by the Australian correspondent of The Times in the issue of August 14. The report stresses the interest of the people in afforestation, the exactness of the division of the fields for cultivation into squares and the straightness of the field drains, ranging from eight to ten feet in depth, the mode of burial in the open in wooden coffins surrounded by a picket fence, and the non-Papuan character of the people, shown especially in the lightness of their colour, their high cheekbones and finely moulded features. It is stated that, while anthropologists hesitate to express any opinion, owing to the lack of confirmation on investigation of previously reported marvels from the interior of Papua, Mr. E. W. P. Chinnery, Government anthropologist of Papua, has suggested their identity with the unknown tribes of Mount Hagen discovered in 1932 by Messrs. J. L. Taylor and M. Leahy (see NATURE, 134, 328; 1934). Mr. Hides, however, maintains that he has discovered a new people, but identifies tribes whom he afterwards encountered to the south-east with the people of Mount Hagen. His own theory is that the light-skinned people escaped years ago up the limestone cliffs after defeat in battle by other tribes and, discovering this fertile valley, settled, multiplied, and developed an entirely self-contained community. Until photographs are available, no judgment is possible, and until much more is known of the physical characters of the inhabitants of Papua, there is little utility in the discussion of theories of the survival of races. In the meantime Mr. Leahy and his brother confidently claim priority of discovery, and assert that light-skinned natives, common to many tribes, are pathological cases and usually exhibit symptoms of a mild form of St. Vitus's dance. Mr. M. Leahy, it is reported, is now on his way to submit photographs, films and other data to the Royal Geographical Society.

St. Vitus's dance, its cure

St. Vitus's dance, its cure Get access C. A. Ward C. A. Ward 1Walthamstow Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s7-X, Issue 238, 19 July 1890, Page 55, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s7-X.238.55c Published: 19 July 1890

St. Vitus's Dance, its cure

St. Vitus's Dance, its cure

Chorea Sancti Viti, or St. Vitus's Dance: Its Treatment with the Bath Mineral Waters

Chorea Sancti Viti, or St. Vitus's Dance: Its Treatment with the Bath Mineral Waters

St. Vitus's Dance

St. Vitus's Dance

I. An account of a cure of the St. Vitus's dance by electricity. In a letter from Anthony Fothergill, M. D. F. R. S. at Northampton, to William Henly, F. R. S. Communicated by Mr. Henly

Sir, Agreeable to my promise, I now proceed to give you some account of a recent cure performed by electricity, which will, I think, afford you much pleasure.