Note 13 — REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS, &c.

On the day of the ceremony of the first communion, celebrated in the parish church of Saint Roch a few years ago (1780), after the evening service they made according to custom the procession through the streets. Scarcely were the children returned to the church, and had resumed their seats, before a young girl fell ill and had convulsions. This affection propagated itself with so much rapidity, that in the space of half an hour fifty or sixty girls from twelve to nineteen years of age were seized with the same convulsions; that is, with a contraction of the throat, an inflation of the stomach, suffocation, hiccups and spasms more or less considerable. These accidents reappeared in some instances in the course of the week; but the following Sunday, being assembled with the dames of Sainte Anne, whose business it is to teach the young ladies, twelve of them were seized with the same convulsions, and more would have followed, if they had not had the precaution to send away each child upon the spot to her relations. The whole were obliged to be divided into several schools. By thus separating the children, and not keeping them together but in small numbers, three weeks sufficed to dissipate entirely this epidemical convulsive affection. See for other instances of the same kind the Natural History of Convulsions by M. Hecquet.