he fear of being bitten by
venomous spiders had increased. Nothing short of death itself was
expected from the wound which these insects inflicted, and if those who
were bitten escaped with their lives, they were said to be seen pining
away in a desponding state of lassitude. Many became weak-sighted or
hard of hearing, some lost the power of speech, and all were insensible
to ordinary causes of excitement. Nothing but the flute or the cithern
afforded them relief. At the sound of these instruments they awoke as it
were by enchantment, opened their eyes, and moving slowly at first,
according to the measure of the music, were, as the time quickened,
gradually hurried on to the most passionate dance. It was generally
observable that country people, who were rude, and ignorant of music,
evinced on these occasions an unusual degree of grace, as if they had
been well practised in elegant movements of the body; for it is a
peculiarity in nervous disorders of this kind, that the organs of motion
are in an altered condition, and are completely under the control of the
over-strained spirits. Cities and villages alike resounded throughout
the summer season with the notes of fifes, clarinets, and Turkish drums;
and patients were everywhere to be met with who looked to dancing as
their only remedy. Alexander ab Alexandro, who gives this account, saw a
young man in a remote village who was seized with a violent attack of
tarantism. He listened with eagerness and a fixed stare to the sound of
a drum, and his graceful movements gradually became more and more
violent, until his dancing was converted into a succession of frantic
leaps, which required the utmost exertion of his whole strength. In the
midst of this over-strained exertion of mind and body the music suddenly
ceased, and he immediately fell powerless to the ground, where he lay
senseless and motionless until its magical effect again aroused him to a
renewal of his impassioned performances.

At the period of which we are treating there was a general conviction,
that by music and dancing the poison of the tarantula was distributed
over the whole body, and expelled through the skin, but that if there
remained the slightest vestige of it in the vessels, this became a
permanent germ of the disorder, so that the dancing fits might again and
again be excited ad infinitum by music. This belief, which resembled the
delusion of those insane persons who, being by artful manage