rious effects resulting
from a sudden cessation of the music was generally confirmed by
Matthioli. If the clarinets and drums ceased for a single moment, which,
as the most skilful payers were tired out by the patients, could not but
happen occasionally, they suffered their limbs to fall listless, again
sank exhausted to the ground, and could find no solace but in a renewal
of the dance. On this account care was taken to continue the music until
exhaustion was produced; for it was better to pay a few extra musicians,
who might relieve each other, than to permit the patient, in the midst of
this curative exercise, to relapse into so deplorable a state of
suffering. The attack consequent upon the bite of the tarantula,
Matthioli describes as varying much in its manner. Some became morbidly
exhilarated, so that they remained for a long while without sleep,
laughing, dancing, and singing in a state of the greatest excitement.
Others, on the contrary, were drowsy. The generality felt nausea and
suffered from vomiting, and some had constant tremors. Complete mania
was no uncommon occurrence, not to mention the usual dejection of spirits
and other subordinate symptoms.

SECT. 4--IDIOSYNCRASIES--MUSIC

Unaccountable emotions, strange desires, and morbid sensual irritations
of all kinds, were as prevalent as in the St. Vitus's dance and similar
great nervous maladies. So late as the sixteenth century patients were
seen armed with glittering swords which, during the attack, they
brandished with wild gestures, as if they were going to engage in a
fencing match. Even women scorned all female delicacy, and, adopting
this impassioned demeanour, did the same; and this phenomenon, as well as
the excitement which the tarantula dancers felt at the sight of anything
with metallic lustre, was quite common up to the period when, in modern
times, the disease disappeared.

The abhorrence of certain colours, and the agreeable sensations produced
by others, were much more marked among the excitable Italians than was
the case in the St. Vitus's dance with the more phlegmatic Germans. Red
colours, which the St. Vitus's dancers detested, they generally liked, so
that a patient was seldom seen who did not carry a red handkerchief for
his gratification, or greedily feast his eyes on any articles of red
clothing worn by the bystanders. Some preferred yellow, others black
colours, of which an explanation was sought, according to the pr