About Vitus tradition; J. F. C. Hecker; Benjamin Guy Babington
The medieval Vitus tradition centers on a youthful martyr associated with Modestus and Crescentia, whose cult spread through relics, calendars, and the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker (1795-1850), a Berlin medical historian, gave the nineteenth century its classic medical-historical account of dancing mania; Benjamin Guy Babington translated Hecker's work into English.
St. Vitus and the Dancing Mania joins two histories that later language often confuses: the hagiographic cult of a youthful martyr and the medical naming of involuntary or epidemic movement. The saint layer is late antique and medieval.
