certainly not have passed over so acceptable a subject of remark, knows
nothing of such a memorable course of this disease arising from poison,
and merely repeats the observations of his Greek predecessors.
Gariopontus, a Salernian physician of the eleventh century, was the first
to describe a kind of insanity, the remote affinity of which to the
tarantula disease is rendered apparent by a very striking symptom. The
patients in their sudden attacks behaved like maniacs, sprang up,
throwing their arms about with wild movements, and, if perchance a sword
was at hand, they wounded themselves and others, so that it became
necessary carefully to secure them. They imagined that they heard voices
and various kinds of sounds, and if, during this state of illusion, the
tones of a favourite instrument happened to catch their ear, they
commenced a spasmodic dance, or ran with the utmost energy which they
could muster until they were totally exhausted. These dangerous maniacs,
who, it would seem, appeared in considerable numbers, were looked upon as
a legion of devils, but on the causes of their malady this obscure writer
adds nothing further than that he believes (oddly enough) that it may
sometimes be excited by the bite of a mad dog. He calls the disease
Anteneasmus, by which is meant no doubt the Enthusiasmus of the Greek
physicians. We cite this phenomenon as an important forerunner of
tarantism, under the conviction that we have thus added to the evidence
that the development of this latter must have been founded on
circumstances which existed from the twelfth to the end of the fourteenth
century; for the origin of tarantism itself is referable, with the utmost
probability, to a period between the middle and the end of this century,
and is consequently contemporaneous with that of the St. Vitus's dance
(1374). The influence of the Roman Catholic religion, connected as this
was, in the middle ages, with the pomp of processions, with public
exercises of penance, and with innumerable practices which strongly
excited the imaginations of its votaries, certainly brought the mind to a
very favourable state for the reception of a nervous disorder.
Accordingly, so long as the doctrines of Christianity were blended with
so much mysticism, these unhallowed disorders prevailed to an important
extent, and even in our own days we find them propagated with the
greatest facility where the existence of superstition produces the same
effec