He repeats
all the observations of Ferdinando, and supports his own
assertions by the experience of his father, a physician at Lecce,
whose testimony, as an eye-witness, may be admitted as
unexceptionable.
The immediate consequences of the tarantula bite, the supervening
nervous disorder, and the aberrations and fits of those who
suffered from hysteria, he describes in a masterly style, not does
he ever suffer his credulity to diminish the authenticity of his
account, of which he has been unjustly accused by later writers.
Finally, tarantism has declined more and more in modern times, and
is now limited to single cases. How could it possibly have
maintained itself unchanged in the eighteenth century, when all
the links which connected it with the Middle Ages had long since
been snapped asunder? Imposture grew more frequent, and wherever
the disease still appeared in its genuine form, its chief cause,
namely, a peculiar cast of melancholy, which formerly had been the
temperament of thousands, was now possessed only occasionally by
unfortunate individuals. It might, therefore, not unreasonably be
maintained that the tarantism of modern times bears nearly the
same relation to the original malady as the St.
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