s caused by music.

Subordinate nervous attacks were much more frequent during this century
than at any former period, and an extraordinary icy coldness was observed
in those who were the subject of them; so that they did not recover their
natural heat until they had engaged in violent dancing. Their anguish
and sense of oppression forced from them a cold perspiration; the
secretion from the kidneys was pale, and they had so great a dislike to
everything cold, that when water was offered them they pushed it away
with abhorrence. Wine, on the contrary, they all drank willingly,
without being heated by it, or in the slightest degree intoxicated.
During the whole period of the attack they suffered from spasms in the
stomach, and felt a disinclination to take food of any kind. They used
to abstain some time before the expected seizures from meat and from
snails, which they thought rendered them more severe, and their great
thirst for wine may therefore in some measure be attributable to the want
of a more nutritious diet; yet the disorder of the nerves was evidently
its chief cause, and the loss of appetite, as well as the necessity for
support by wine, were its effects. Loss of voice, occasional blindness,
vertigo, complete insanity, with sleeplessness, frequent weeping without
any ostensible cause, were all usual symptoms. Many patients found
relief from being placed in swings or rocked in cradles; others required
to be roused from their state of suffering by severe blows on the soles
of their feet; others beat themselves, without any intention of making a
display, but solely for the purpose of allaying the intense nervous
irritation which they felt; and a considerable number were seen with
their bellies swollen, like those of the St. John's dancers, while the
violence of the intestinal disorder was indicated in others by obstinate
constipation or diarrhoea and vomiting. These pitiable objects gradually
lost their strength and their colour, and creeping about with injected
eyes, jaundiced complexions, and inflated bowels, soon fell into a state
of profound melancholy, which found food and solace in the solemn tolling
of the funeral bell, and in an abode among the tombs of cemeteries, as is
related of the Lycanthropes of former times.

The persuasion of the inevitable consequences of being bitten by the
tarantula, exercised a dominion over men's minds which even the
healthiest and strongest could not shake off. So l