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 prevailing
notions of the times, in the difference of temperaments.
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