Does the learned doctor insinuate that the Italians owed their natural taste for music to this invasion of Tarantism?
“At the close of the fifteenth century we find that Tarantism had spread beyond the boundaries of Apulia, and that the 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 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 if 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 overstrained spirits.”
This increased agility and grace of movement is by no means to be discredited by the reader. It is a symptom which distinguishes one class of epileptic patients. Some have attributed it to an over-excitement of the cerebellum. However that may be, there are greater wonders than this contained in our most sober and trustworthy books on the disorders of the nervous system. We continue the account:—
“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 overstrained 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.”
We have put the expression “mind and body” in italics, because we may as well take this opportunity to observe, that although convulsions of this kind are excited, and assume a certain form on account of the predominance of some idea, yet, when once called forth, they are almost entirely mechanical in their nature. Mere animal excitability—what is called the reflex action, or other automatic movements quite as little associated with the immediate operations of “mind”—carry on the rest of the process. And it is some consolation to think that the appearance of pain and distress which marks convulsive disorders of all descriptions, is, for the most part, illusory. The premonitory symptoms may be very distressing, but the condition of the patient, when the fit is on, is that of insensibility to pain.
The general conviction was, that by music and dancing the poison of the tarantula was distributed over the whole body, and expelled through the skin; but, unfortunately, it was also believed that if the slightest vestige of it remained behind the disorder would break out again. Thus there was no confidence excited in a perfect cure. Men who had danced themselves well one summer watched the next summer for the returning symptoms, and found in themselves what they looked for. Thus—
“The number of those affected by it increased beyond belief, for whoever had actually been, or even fancied that he had been once bitten by a poisonous spider or scorpion, made his appearance annually whenever the merry notes of the Tarantella resounded. Inquisitive females joined the throng and caught the disease—not indeed from the poison of the spider, but from the mental poison which they eagerly received through the eye; and thus the cure of the Tarantati gradually became established as a regular festival of the populace.”
It was customary for whole bands of musicians to traverse Italy during the summer months, and the cure of the disordered was undertaken on a grand scale. This season of dancing and music was called “The women’s little carnival,” for it was women more especially who conducted the arrangements. It was they, too, it seems, who paid the musicians their fee. The music itself received its due share of study and attention. There were different kinds of the Tarantella (as the curative melody was called) suited to every variety of the ailment.
One very curious circumstance connected with this disease must not pass unnoticed—the passion excited by certain colours. Amongst the Germans, those afflicted by St Vitus’s dance were enraged by any garment of the colour of red. Amongst the Italians, on the contrary, red colours were generally liked. Some preferred one colour, some another, but the devotion to the chosen colour was one of the most extraordinary symptoms which the disease manifested in Italy. The colour that pleased the patient he was enamoured of; the colour that displeased excited his utmost fury.
“Some preferred yellow, others were enraptured with green; and eyewitnesses describe this rage for colours as so extraordinary that they can scarcely find words with which to express their astonishment. No sooner did the patients obtain a sight of their favourite colour than they rushed like infuriated animals towards the object, devoured it with their eager looks, kissed and caressed it in every possible way, and, gradually resigning themselves to softer sensations, adopted the languishing expression of enamoured lovers, and embraced the handkerchief, or whatever article it might be which was presented to them, with the most intense ardour, while the tears streamed from their eyes as if they were completely overwhelmed by the inebriating impression on their senses.