the act of shaking a body, or tossing it backwards and forwards.

in Physics, is often used for an intestine commotion of the parts of a natural body. Fermentation and effervescence are attended with a brisk agitation of the particles.

AGITATION is one of the chief causes or instruments of mixtion; by the agitation of the parts of the blood and chyle, in their continual circulation, sanguification is in a good measure effected. Butter is made out of milk by the same means; in which operation a separation is made of the oleous parts from the serous, and a conjunction of the oleous together. Digestion itself is only supposed to be an insensible kind of agitation.

AGITATION is reputed one of the symptoms of inspiration. Petit informs us,1 that in the last century there arose in a church of Italy, for the space of a year, a vapour of an extraordinary kind, which put all the people into trembling and agitations, and, unless they got away betimes, set them a dancing, with strange contortions and gesticulations. This seems to verify what has been related of the temple of Delphi.