They dearly expiated this
scepticism, however, when they were led, with an inconsiderate
hardihood, to test their opinions by experiment; for many of them
became the subjects of severe tarantism, and even a distinguished
prelate, Jo. Baptist Quinzato, Bishop of Foligno, having allowed
himself, by way of a joke, to be bitten by a tarantula, could
obtain a cure in no other way than by being, through the influence
of the tarantella, compelled to dance. Others among the clergy,
who wished to shut their ears against music, because they
considered dancing derogatory to their station, fell into a
dangerous state of illness by thus delaying the crisis of the
malady, and were obliged at last to save themselves from a
miserable death by submitting to the unwelcome but sole means of
cure. Thus it appears that the age was so little favourable to
freedom of thought, that even the most decided sceptics, incapable
of guarding themselves against the recollection of what had been
presented to the eye, were subdued by a poison, the powers of
which they had ridiculed, and which was in itself inert in its
effect.
SECT. 5--HYSTERIA
Different characteristics of the morbidly excited vitality having
been rendered prominent by tarantism in different individuals, it
could not but happen that other derangements of the nerves would
assume the form of this whenever circumstances favoured such a
transition.
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