“The dancing fits of a certain Capuchin friar in Tarentum excited so much curiosity that Cardinal Cajetano proceeded to the monastery that he might see with his own eyes what was going on. As soon as the monk, who was in the midst of his dance, perceived the spiritual prince clothed in his red garments, he no longer listened to the tarantella of the musicians, but with strange gestures endeavoured to approach the cardinal, as if he wished to count the very threads of his scarlet robe, and to allay his intense longing by its odour. The interference of the spectators, and his own respect, prevented his touching it, and thus, the irritation of his senses not being appeased, he fell into a state of such anguish and disquietude that he presently sunk down in a swoon, from which he did not recover until the cardinal compassionately gave him his cape. This he immediately seized in the greatest ecstasy, and pressed, now to his breast, now to his forehead and cheeks, and then again commenced his dance as if in the frenzy of a love fit.”
Another curious symptom, which was probably connected with this passion for colour, was an ardent longing for the sea. These over-susceptible people were attracted irresistibly to the boundless expanse of the blue ocean, and lost themselves in its contemplation. Some were carried so far by this vague passionate longing as to cast themselves into the waves.
The persuasion of the inevitable and fatal consequences of being bitten by the tarantula was so general that it exercised a dominion over the strongest minds. Men who in their sober moments considered the disorder as a species of nervous affection depending on the imagination, were themselves brought under the influence of this imagination, and suffered from the disorder at the approach of the dreaded tarantula. A very striking anecdote of this kind is told of the Bishop of Foligno. Quite sceptical as to the venom of the insect, he allowed himself to be bitten by a tarantula. But he had not measured the strength of his own imagination, however well he had estimated the real malignancy of the spider. The bishop fell ill, nor was there any cure for him but the music and the dance. Many reverend old gentlemen, it is said, to whom this remedy appeared highly derogatory, only exaggerated their symptoms by delaying to have recourse to what, after all, was found to be the true and sole specific.
But even popular errors are not eternal. This of Tarantism continued, our author tells us, throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, but gradually declined till it became limited to single cases. “It may therefore be not unreasonably maintained,” he concludes, “that the Tarantism of modern times bears nearly the same relation to the original malady as the St Vitus’s dance which still exists, and certainly has all along existed, bears, in certain cases, to the original dancing mania of the dancers of St John.”
In a subsequent chapter, our author informs us that a disease of a similar character existed in Abyssinia, or still exists, for the authority he quotes is that of an English surgeon who resided nine years in Abyssinia, from 1810 to the year 1819. We cannot pretend to say that we have ever seen the book, which the learned German has, however, not permitted to escape him—we have never seen the Life and Adventures of Nathaniel Pearce, written by himself; but, judging by the extract here given, Nathaniel Pearce must be a person worth knowing, he writes with so much candour and simplicity. The disease is called in Abyssinia the Tigretier, because it occurs most frequently in the Tigrè country. The first remedy resorted to is the introduction of a learned Dofter, “who reads the Gospel of St John, and drenches the patient with cold water daily.” If this does not answer, then the relations hire a band of trumpeters, drummers, and fifers, and buy a quantity of liquor; all the young men and women of the place assemble at the patient’s house, and she (for it is generally a woman), arrayed in all the finery and trinkets that can be borrowed from the neighbours, is excited by the music to dance, day after day if necessary, till she drops down from utter exhaustion. The disease is attended with a great emaciation; and the doctor says “he was almost alarmed to see one nearly a skeleton move with such strength.” He then proceeds to recount his own domestic calamity in a strain of the most commendable candour:—
“I could not have ventured to write this from hearsay, nor could I conceive it possible until I was obliged to put this remedy in practice upon my own wife, who was seized with the same disorder. I at first thought that a whip would be of some service, and one day attempted a few strokes when unnoticed by any person, we being by ourselves, and I having a strong suspicion that this ailment sprang from the weak minds of women, who were encouraged in it for the sake of the grandeur, rich dress, and music which accompany the cure. But how much was I surprised, the moment I struck a light blow, thinking to do good, to find that she became like a corpse; and even the joints of her fingers became so stiff that I could not straighten them. Indeed, I really thought that she was dead, and immediately made it known to the people in the house that she had fainted, but did not tell them the cause; upon which they immediately brought music, which I had for many days denied them, and which soon revived her; and I then left the house to her relations, to cure her at my expense. One day I went privately with a companion to see my wife dance, and kept at a short distance, as I was ashamed to go near the crowd. In looking steadfastly upon her, while dancing or jumping, more like a deer than a human being, I said that it certainly was not my wife; at which my companion burst into a fit of laughter, from which he could scarcely refrain all the way home.”
The capability of sustaining the most violent exercise, for a long time together, and on very little food, is not one of the least perplexities attendant upon these nervous or epileptic diseases. The partial suspension of sensation and volition, by sparing the brain, may have something to do with it. But into scientific perplexities of this kind we cannot now enter. One plain and homely caution is derivable from all these histories. Good sense is a great preservative of health. Do not voluntarily make a fool of yourself, or your folly may become in turn the master of your reason. Epilepsy has been brought on by the simulation of epilepsy. We doubt not that a man might dance to his own shadow, and talk to it, as it danced before him on the wall, till he drove himself into a complete frenzy. A sect in America thought fit to introduce certain grimaces, laughing, weeping, and the like, into their public service. It was not long before their grimaces, in some of their numbers, became involuntary; the muscles of the face had escaped the control of the will. A decided tongue-mania was exhibited a short time amongst the Irvingites. Happily, in the present state of society, men’s minds are called off into so many directions, that a predominant idea of this kind has little chance of establishing itself in that tyrannous manner which we have seen possible in the middle ages. But it is better not to play with edged tools. If people will stand round a table, fixing their minds on one idea—that a certain mysterious influence will pass through their fingers to move the table—they will lose, for a time, the voluntary command over their own fingers, which will exert themselves without any volition or consciousness on their part. They are entering, in fact, into that state which, in the olden time, was considered a demoniacal possession; so that, speaking from this point of view, one may truly say that “Satan does turn the table,” but it is by entering into the table-turner. When we have been asked whether there is anything in mesmerism, we have always answered—a great deal more than you ought, without medical advice, to make trial of. Nor do we at all admire the performance of the so-called electro-biologist. Experiments in the interest of science are permissible; but is it fit that any one should practise the art of inducing a temporary state of idiocy in persons of weak or susceptible nerves, for the purpose of collecting a crowd, and passing round the hat?
The subject of the third treatise of Dr Hecker is the Sweating Sickness. This third part is more miscellaneous than its predecessors, and we have no space to do justice to its varied and sometimes disputable matter. Dr Hecker describes the sweating sickness as a legacy left us by the civil wars of York and Lancaster. It first developed itself in Richmond’s army, which had been collected from abroad, over-fatigued by long marches in a very damp season, and probably ill supplied with rations. Its rapid extension through the cities he attributes to the intemperance of the English, to their overfeeding, and the want of cleanliness in their houses. Gluttony, and the filth of the rush-covered floors, he detects even amongst the wealthiest of the land. For a minute description of the disease, and the Doctor’s investigation into the nature of it, we must refer to the book itself.
On the physicians, and the manner in which they addressed themselves to the encounter of this strange calamity, there is a passage which it may be instructive to peruse:—
“The physicians could do little or nothing for the people in this extremity. They are nowhere alluded to throughout this epidemic, and even those who might have come forward to succour their fellow-citizen, had fallen into the errors of Galen, and their dialectic minds sank under this appalling phenomenon. This holds good even of the famous Thomas Linacre, subsequently physician in ordinary to two monarchs, and founder of the College of Physicians in 1518. In the prime of his youth he had been an eyewitness of the events at Oxford, and survived even the second and third eruption of the sweating sickness; but in none of his writings do we find a single word respecting this disease, which is of such permanent importance. In fact, the restorers of the medical science of ancient Greece, who were followed by all the most enlightened men in Europe, with the single exception of Linacre, occupied themselves rather with the ancient terms of art than with actual observation, and in their critical researches overlooked the important events that were passing before their eyes. This reminds us of the later Greek physicians, who for four hundred years paid no attention to the smallpox, because they could find no description of it in the immortal works of Galen!”