ch a result, no one could call
their self-deception a mere imposture, and unconditionally condemn it as
such.

This numerous class of patients certainly contributed not a little to the
maintenance of the evil, for their fantastic sufferings, in which
dissimulation and reality could scarcely be distinguished even by
themselves, much less by their physicians, were imitated in the same way
as the distortions of the St. Vitus's dancers by the impostors of that
period. It was certainly by these persons also that the number of
subordinate symptoms was increased to an endless extent, as may be
conceived from the daily observation of hysterical patients who, from a
morbid desire to render themselves remarkable, deviate from the laws of
moral propriety. Powerful sexual excitement had often the most decided
influence over their condition. Many of them exposed themselves in the
most indecent manner, tore their hair out by the roots, with howling and
gnashing of their teeth; and when, as was sometimes the case, their
unsatisfied passion hurried them on to a state of frenzy, they closed
their existence by self destruction; it being common at that time for
these unfortunate beings to precipitate themselves into the wells.

It might hence seem that, owing to the conduct of patients of this
description, so much of fraud and falsehood would be mixed up with the
original disorder that, having passed into another complaint, it must
have been itself destroyed. This, however, did not happen in the first
half of the seventeenth century; for, as a clear proof that tarantism
remained substantially the same and quite unaffected by hysteria, there
were in many places, and in particular at Messapia, fewer women affected
than men, who, in their turn, were in no small proportion led into
temptation by sexual excitement. In other places, as, for example, at
Brindisi, the case was reversed, which may, as in other complaints, be in
some measure attributable to local causes. Upon the whole it appears,
from concurrent accounts, that women by no means enjoyed the distinction
of being attacked by tarantism more frequently than men.

It is said that the cicatrix of the tarantula bite, on the yearly or half-
yearly return of the fit, became discoloured, but on this point the
distinct testimony of good observers is wanting to deprive the assertion
of its utter improbability.

It is not out of place to remark here that, about the same time that
tara