There was this
difference, however--that the symptoms supervening on the
occurrence of this accident were not accompanied by the Apulian
nervous disorder, which, as has been shown in the foregoing pages,
had its origin rather in the melancholic temperament of the
inhabitants of the south of Italy than in the nature of the
tarantula poison itself. This poison is therefore, doubtless, to
be considered only as a remote cause of the complaint, which, but
for that temperament, would be inadequate to its production. The
Persians employed a very rough means of counteracting the bad
consequences of a poison of this sort. They drenched the wounded
person with milk, and then, by a violent rotatory motion in a
suspended box, compelled him to vomit.
SECT. 6--DECREASE
The Dancing Mania, arising from the tarantula bite, continued with
all those additions of self-deception and of the dissimulation
which is such a constant attendant on nervous disorders of this
kind, through the whole course of the seventeenth century. It was
indeed, gradually on the decline, but up to the termination of
this period showed such extraordinary symptoms that Baglivi, one
of the best physicians of that time, thought he did a service to
science by making them the subject of a dissertation.
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