The Black Death and Dancing Mania. A large-scale possession phenomenon?

Justus F.C. Hecker (1888): The Black Death and The Dancing Mania (translated by Benjamin Guy Babington), first published in German 1832:

The effects of the Black Death had not yet subsided, and the graves of
millions of its victims were scarcely closed, when a strange delusion
arose in Germany, which took possession of the minds of men, and, in
spite of the divinity of our nature, hurried away body and soul into the
magic circle of hellish superstition. It was a convulsion which in the most
extraordinary manner infuriated the human frame, and excited the
astonishment of contemporaries for more than two centuries, since which
time it has never reappeared. It was called the dance of St. John or of St.
Vitus, on account of the Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterised,
and which gave to those affected, whilst performing their wild dance, and
screaming and foaming with fury, all the appearance of persons
possessed. It did not remain confined to particular localities, but was
propagated by the sight of the sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over
the whole of Germany and the neighbouring countries to the north-west,
which were already prepared for its reception by the prevailing opinions
of the time.

So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at
Aix-la-Chapelle, who had come out of Germany, and who, united by one
common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the
churches the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand in
hand, and appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued
dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together, in wild
delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion.
They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the
agonies of death, until they were swathed in cloths bound tightly round
their waists, upon which they again recovered, and remained free from
complaint until the next attack. This practice of swathing was resorted to
on account of the tympany which followed these spasmodic ravings, but
the bystanders frequently relieved patients in a less artificial manner, by
thumping and trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing they
neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through
the senses, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits
whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted
that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which
obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the
heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according
as the religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected
in their imaginations.

Where the disease was completely developed, the attack commenced with
epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless,
panting and labouring for breath. They foamed at the mouth, and
suddenly springing up began their dance amidst strange contortions. Yet
the malady doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was
modified by temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical
contemporaries but imperfectly noted the essential particulars,
accustomed as they were to confound their observation of natural events
with their notions of the world of spirits.

It was but a few months ere this demoniacal disease had spread from
Aix-la-Chapelle, where it appeared in July, over the neighbouring
Netherlands. In Liege, Utrecht, Tongres, and many other towns of
Belgium, the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and their
waists girt with cloths, that they might, as soon as the paroxysm was
over, receive immediate relief on the attack of the tympany. This
bandage was, by the insertion of a stick, easily twisted tight: many,
however, obtained more relief from kicks and blows, which they found
numbers of persons ready to administer: for, wherever the dancers
appeared, the people assembled in crowds to gratify their curiosity with
the frightful spectacle. At length the increasing number of the affected
excited no less anxiety than the attention that was paid to them. In
towns and villages they took possession of the religious houses,
processions were everywhere instituted on their account, and masses
were said and hymns were sung, while the disease itself, of the
demoniacal origin of which no one entertained the least doubt, excited
everywhere astonishment and horror. In Liege the priests had recourse
to exorcisms, and endeavoured by every means in their power to allay an
evil which threatened so much danger to themselves; for the possessed
assembling in multitudes, frequently poured forth imprecations against
them, and menaced their destruction. They intimidated the people also
to such a degree that there was an express ordinance issued that no one
should make any but square-toed shoes, because these fanatics had
manifested a morbid dislike to the pointed shoes which had come into
fashion immediately after the “Great Mortality” in 1350. They were still
more irritated at the sight of red colours, the influence of which on the
disordered nerves might lead us to imagine an extraordinary accordance
between this spasmodic malady and the condition of infuriated animals;
but in the St. John’s dancers this excitement was probably connected with
apparitions consequent upon their convulsions. There were likewise
some of them who were unable to endure the sight of persons weeping.

The clergy seemed to become daily more and more confirmed in their
belief that those who were affected were a kind of sectarians, and on this
account they hastened their exorcisms as much as possible, in order that
the evil might not spread amongst the higher classes, for hitherto
scarcely any but the poor had been attacked, and the few people of
respectability among the laity and clergy who were to be found among
them, were persons whose natural frivolity was unable to withstand the
excitement of novelty, even though it proceeded from a demoniacal
influence. Some of the affected had indeed themselves declared, when
under the influence of priestly forms of exorcism, that if the demons had
been allowed only a few weeks’ more time, they would have entered the
bodies of the nobility and princes, and through these have destroyed the
clergy. Assertions of this sort, which those possessed uttered whilst in a
state which may be compared with that of magnetic sleep, obtained
general belief, and passed from mouth to mouth with wonderful
additions. The priesthood were, on this account, so much the more
zealous in their endeavours to anticipate every dangerous excitement of
the people, as if the existing order of things could have been seriously
threatened by such incoherent ravings. Their exertions were effectual,
for exorcism was a powerful remedy in the fourteenth century; or it might
perhaps be that this wild infatuation terminated in consequence of the
exhaustion which naturally ensued from it; at all events, in the course of
ten or eleven months the St. John’s dancers were no longer to be found in
any of the cities of Belgium. The evil, however, was too deeply rooted to
give way altogether to such feeble attacks.

A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at Aixla-
Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those
possessed amounted to more than five hundred, and about the same
time at Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with
eleven hundred dancers. Peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their
workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels, and
this rich commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous disorder.
Secret desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for
wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery,
availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood.
Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse
themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the
poison of mental infection. Above a hundred unmarried women were
seen raving about in consecrated and unconsecrated places, and the
consequences were soon perceived. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who
understood how to imitate to the life the gestures and convulsions of
those really affected, roved from place to place seeking maintenance and
adventures, and thus, wherever they went, spreading this disgusting
spasmodic disease like a plague; for in maladies of this kind the
susceptible are infected as easily by the appearance as by the reality. At
last it was found necessary to drive away these mischievous guests, who
were equally inaccessible to the exorcisms of the priests and the
remedies of the physicians. It was not, however, until after four months
that the Rhenish cities were able to suppress these impostures, which
had so alarmingly increased the original evil. In the meantime, when
once called into existence, the plague crept on, and found abundant food
in the tone of thought which prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and even, though in a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth
and seventeenth, causing a permanent disorder of the mind, and
exhibiting in those cities to whose inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as
strange as they were detestable.

[...]

Strasburg was visited by the “Dancing Plague” in the year 1418, and the
same infatuation existed among the people there, as in the towns of
Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of
those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd
behaviour, and then by their constantly following swarms of dancers.
These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied
by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators
attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and
relations, who came to look after those among the misguided multitude
who belonged to their respective families. Imposture and profligacy
played their part in this city also, but the morbid delusion itself seems to
have predominated. On this account religion could only bring provisional
aid, and therefore the town council benevolently took an interest in the
afflicted. They divided them into separate parties, to each of which they
appointed responsible superintendents to protect them from harm, and
perhaps also to restrain their turbulence. They were thus conducted on
foot and in carriages to the chapels of St. Vitus, near Zabern and
Rotestein, where priests were in attendance to work upon their misguided
minds by masses and other religious ceremonies. After divine worship
was completed, they were led in solemn procession to the altar, where
they made some small offering of alms, and where it is probable that
many were, through the influence of devotion and the sanctity of the
place, cured of this lamentable aberration. It is worthy of observation, at
all events, that the Dancing Mania did not recommence at the altars of
the saint, and that from him alone assistance was implored, and through
his miraculous interposition a cure was expected, which was beyond the
reach of human skill. The personal history of St. Vitus is by no means
important in this matter. He was a Sicilian youth, who, together with
Modestus and Crescentia, suffered martyrdom at the time of the
persecution of the Christians, under Diocletian, in the year 303. The
legends respecting him are obscure, and he would certainly have been
passed over without notice among the innumerable apocryphal martyrs of
the first centuries, had not the transfer of his body to St. Denys, and
thence, in the year 836, to Corvey, raised him to a higher rank. From this
time forth it may be supposed that many miracles were manifested at his
new sepulchre, which were of essential service in confirming the Roman
faith among the Germans, and St. Vitus was soon ranked among the
fourteen saintly helpers (Nothhelfer or Apotheker). His altars were
multiplied, and the people had recourse to them in all kinds of distresses,
and revered him as a powerful intercessor. As the worship of these saints
was, however, at that time stripped of all historical connections, which
were purposely obliterated by the priesthood, a legend was invented at
the beginning of the fifteenth century, or perhaps even so early as the
fourteenth, that St. Vitus had, just before he bent his neck to the sword,
prayed to God that he might protect from the Dancing Mania all those
who should solemnise the day of his commemoration, and fast upon its
eve, and that thereupon a voice from heaven was heard, saying, “Vitus,
thy prayer is accepted.” Thus St. Vitus became the patron saint of those
afflicted with the Dancing Plague.

[...]

The Dancing Mania of the year 1374 was, in fact, no new disease, but a
phenomenon well known in the Middle Ages, of which many wondrous
stories were traditionally current among the people. In the year 1237
upwards of a hundred children were said to have been suddenly seized
with this disease at Erfurt, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping
along the road to Arnstadt. When they arrived at that place they fell
exhausted to the ground, and, according to an account of an old
chronicle, many of them, after they were taken home by their parents,
died, and the rest remained affected, to the end of their lives, with a
permanent tremor.

[...]

It was of the utmost advantage to the St. Vitus’s dancers that they made
choice of a favourite patron saint; for, not to mention that people were
inclined to compare them to the possessed with evil spirits described in
the Bible, and thence to consider them as innocent victims to the power
of Satan, the name of their great intercessor recommended them to
general commiseration, and a magic boundary was thus set to every
harsh feeling, which might otherwise have proved hostile to their safety.
Other fanatics were not so fortunate, being often treated with the most
relentless cruelty, whenever the notions of the middle ages either
excused or commanded it as a religious duty.

[...]

The learned Nicholas Perotti gives the earliest account of this strange
disorder. Nobody had the least doubt that it was caused by the bite of
the tarantula, a ground-spider common in Apulia: and the fear of this
insect was so general that its bite was in all probability much oftener
imagined, or the sting of some other kind of insect mistaken for it, than
actually received. The word tarantula is apparently the same as
terrantola, a name given by the Italians to the stellio of the old Romans,
which was a kind of lizard, said to be poisonous, and invested by
credulity with such extraordinary qualities, that, like the serpent of the
Mosaic account of the Creation, it personified, in the imaginations of the
vulgar, the notion of cunning, so that even the jurists designated a
cunning fraud by the appellation of a “stellionatus.” Perotti expressly
assures us that this reptile was called by the Romans tarantula; and since
he himself, who was one of the most distinguished authors of his time,
strangely confounds spiders and lizards together, so that he considers
the Apulian tarantula, which he ranks among the class of spiders, to have
the same meaning as the kind of lizard called ασκαλ βωτης, it is the less
extraordinary that the unlearned country people of Apulia should
confound the much-dreaded ground-spider with the fabulous starlizard,
and appropriate to the one the name of the other. The derivation
of the word tarantula, from the city of Tarentum, or the river Thara, in
Apulia, on the banks of which this insect is said to have been most
frequently found, or, at least, its bite to have had the most venomous
effect, seems not to be supported by authority. So much for the name of
this famous spider, which, unless we are greatly mistaken, throws no
light whatever upon the nature of the disease in question. Naturalists
who, possessing a knowledge of the past, should not misapply their
talents by employing them in establishing the dry distinction of forms,
would find here much that calls for research, and their efforts would clear
up many a perplexing obscurity.

Perotti states that the tarantula—that is, the spider so called—was not
met with in Italy in former times, but that in his day it had become
common, especially in Apulia, as well as in some other districts. He
deserves, however, no great confidence as a naturalist, notwithstanding
his having delivered lectures in Bologna on medicine and other sciences.
He at least has neglected to prove his assertion, which is not borne out
by any analogous phenomenon observed in modern times with regard to
the history of the spider species. It is by no means to be admitted that
the tarantula did not make its appearance in Italy before the disease
ascribed to its bite became remarkable, even though tempests more
violent than those unexampled storms which arose at the time of the
Black Death in the middle of the fourteenth century had set the insect
world in motion; for the spider is little if at all susceptible of those
cosmical influences which at times multiply locusts and other winged
insects to a wonderful extent, and compel them to migrate.
The symptoms which Perotti enumerates as consequent on the bite of the
tarantula agree very exactly with those described by later writers. Those
who were bitten, generally fell into a state of melancholy, and appeared
to be stupefied, and scarcely in possession of their senses. This
condition was, in many cases, united with so great a sensibility to music,
that at the very first tones of their favourite melodies they sprang up,
shouting for joy, and danced on without intermission, until they sank to
the ground exhausted and almost lifeless. In others, the disease did not
take this cheerful turn. They wept constantly, and as if pining away with
some unsatisfied desire, spent their days in the greatest misery and
anxiety. Others, again, in morbid fits of love, cast their longing looks on
women, and instances of death are recorded, which are said to have
occurred under a paroxysm of either laughing or weeping.
From this description, incomplete as it is, we may easily gather that
tarantism, the essential symptoms of which are mentioned in it, could not
have originated in the fifteenth century, to which Perotti’s account refers;
for that author speaks of it as a well-known malady, and states that the
omission to notice it by older writers was to be ascribed solely to the
want of education in Apulia, the only province probably where the disease
at that time prevailed. A nervous disorder that had arrived at so high a
degree of development must have been long in existence, and doubtless
had required an elaborate preparation by the concurrence of general
causes.

The symptoms which followed the bite of venomous spiders were well
known to the ancients, and had excited the attention of their best
observers, who agree in their descriptions of them. It is probable that
among the numerous species of their phalangium, the Apulian tarantula
is included, but it is difficult to determine this point with certainty, more
especially because in Italy the tarantula was not the only insect which
caused this nervous affection, similar results being likewise attributed to
the bite of the scorpion. Lividity of the whole body, as well as of the
countenance, difficulty of speech, tremor of the limbs, icy coldness, pale
urine, depression of spirits, headache, a flow of tears, nausea, vomiting,
sexual excitement, flatulence, syncope, dysuria, watchfulness, lethargy,
even death itself, were cited by them as the consequences of being bitten
by venomous spiders, and they made little distinction as to their kinds.
To these symptoms we may add the strange rumour, repeated
throughout the middle ages, that persons who were bitten, ejected by the
bowels and kidneys, and even by vomiting, substances resembling a
spider’s web.

Nowhere, however, do we find any mention made that those affected felt
an irresistible propensity to dancing, or that they were accidentally cured
by it. Even Constantine of Africa, who lived 500 years after Aëtius, and,
as the most learned physician of the school of Salerno, would certainly
not have passed over so acceptable a subject of remark, knows nothing
of such a memorable course of this disease arising from poison, and
merely repeats the observations of his Greek predecessors. Gariopontus,
a Salernian physician of the eleventh century, was the first to describe a
kind of insanity, the remote affinity of which to the tarantula disease is
rendered apparent by a very striking symptom. The patients in their
sudden attacks behaved like maniacs, sprang up, throwing their arms
about with wild movements, and, if perchance a sword was at hand, they
wounded themselves and others, so that it became necessary carefully to
secure them. They imagined that they heard voices and various kinds of
sounds, and if, during this state of illusion, the tones of a favourite
instrument happened to catch their ear, they commenced a spasmodic
dance, or ran with the utmost energy which they could muster until they
were totally exhausted. These dangerous maniacs, who, it would seem,
appeared in considerable numbers, were looked upon as a legion of
devils, but on the causes of their malady this obscure writer adds nothing
further than that he believes (oddly enough) that it may sometimes be
excited by the bite of a mad dog. He calls the disease Anteneasmus, by
which is meant no doubt the Enthusiasmus of the Greek physicians. We
cite this phenomenon as an important forerunner of tarantism, under the
conviction that we have thus added to the evidence that the development
of this latter must have been founded on circumstances which existed
from the twelfth to the end of the fourteenth century; for the origin of
tarantism itself is referable, with the utmost probability, to a period
between the middle and the end of this century, and is consequently
contemporaneous with that of the St. Vitus’s dance (1374). The influence
of the Roman Catholic religion, connected as this was, in the middle ages,
with the pomp of processions, with public exercises of penance, and with
innumerable practices which strongly excited the imaginations of its
votaries, certainly brought the mind to a very favourable state for the
reception of a nervous disorder. Accordingly, so long as the doctrines of
Christianity were blended with so much mysticism, these unhallowed
disorders prevailed to an important extent, and even in our own days we
find them propagated with the greatest facility where the existence of
superstition produces the same effect, in more limited districts, as it once
did among whole nations. But this is not all. Every country in Europe,
and Italy perhaps more than any other, was visited during the middle
ages by frightful plagues, which followed each other in such quick
succession that they gave the exhausted people scarcely any time for
recovery. The Oriental bubo-plague ravaged Italy sixteen times between
the years 1119 and 1340. Small-pox and measles were still more
destructive than in modern times, and recurred as frequently. St.
Anthony’s fire was the dread of town and country; and that disgusting
disease, the leprosy, which, in consequence of the Crusades, spread its
insinuating poison in all directions, snatched from the paternal hearth
innumerable victims who, banished from human society, pined away in
lonely huts, whither they were accompanied only by the pity of the
benevolent and their own despair. All these calamities, of which the
moderns have scarcely retained any recollection, were heightened to an
incredible degree by the Black Death, which spread boundless
devastation and misery over Italy. Men’s minds were everywhere
morbidly sensitive; and as it happened with individuals whose senses,
when they are suffering under anxiety, become more irritable, so that
trifles are magnified into objects of great alarm, and slight shocks, which
would scarcely affect the spirits when in health, gave rise in them to
severe diseases, so was it with this whole nation, at all times so alive to
emotions, and at that period so sorely oppressed with the horrors of
death.

The bite of venomous spiders, or rather the unreasonable fear of its
consequences, excited at such a juncture, though it could not have done
so at an earlier period, a violent nervous disorder, which, like St. Vitus’s
dance in Germany, spread by sympathy, increasing in severity as it took a
wider range, and still further extending its ravages from its long
continuance. Thus, from the middle of the fourteenth century, the furies
of the Dance brandished their scourge over afflicted mortals; and music,
for which the inhabitants of Italy, now probably for the first time,
manifested susceptibility and talent, became capable of exciting ecstatic
attacks in those affected, and then furnished the magical means of
exorcising their melancholy.

At the close of the fifteenth century we find that tarantism had spread
beyond the boundaries of Apulia, and that the fear of being bitten by
venomous spiders had increased. Nothing short of death itself was
expected from the wound which these insects inflicted, and if those who
were bitten escaped with their lives, they were said to be seen pining
away in a desponding state of lassitude. Many became weak-sighted or
hard of hearing, some lost the power of speech, and all were insensible
to ordinary causes of excitement. Nothing but the flute or the cithern
afforded them relief. At the sound of these instruments they awoke as it
were by enchantment, opened their eyes, and moving slowly at first,
according to the measure of the music, were, as the time quickened,
gradually hurried on to the most passionate dance. It was generally
observable that country people, who were rude, and ignorant of music,
evinced on these occasions an unusual degree of grace, as if they had
been well practised in elegant movements of the body; for it is a
peculiarity in nervous disorders of this kind, that the organs of motion
are in an altered condition, and are completely under the control of the
over-strained spirits. Cities and villages alike resounded throughout the
summer season with the notes of fifes, clarinets, and Turkish drums; and
patients were everywhere to be met with who looked to dancing as their
only remedy. Alexander ab Alexandro, who gives this account, saw a
young man in a remote village who was seized with a violent attack of
tarantism. He listened with eagerness and a fixed stare to the sound of a
drum, and his graceful movements gradually became more and more
violent, until his dancing was converted into a succession of frantic leaps,
which required the utmost exertion of his whole strength. In the midst of
this over-strained exertion of mind and body the music suddenly ceased,
and he immediately fell powerless to the ground, where he lay senseless
and motionless until its magical effect again aroused him to a renewal of
his impassioned performances.

At the period of which we are treating there was a general conviction,
that by music and dancing the poison of the tarantula was distributed
over the whole body, and expelled through the skin, but that if there
remained the slightest vestige of it in the vessels, this became a
permanent germ of the disorder, so that the dancing fits might again and
again be excited ad infinitum by music. This belief, which resembled the
delusion of those insane persons who, being by artful management freed
from the imagined causes of their sufferings, are but for a short time
released from their false notions, was attended with the most injurious
effects: for in consequence of it those affected necessarily became by
degrees convinced of the incurable nature of their disorder. They
expected relief, indeed, but not a cure, from music; and when the heat of
summer awakened a recollection of the dances of the preceding year,
they, like the St. Vitus’s dancers of the same period before St. Vitus’s day,
again grew dejected and misanthropic, until, by music and dancing, they
dispelled the melancholy which had become with them a kind of sensual
enjoyment.

Under such favourable circumstances, it is clear that tarantism must every
year have made further progress. The number of those affected by it
increased beyond all belief, for whoever had either actually been, or even
fancied that he had been, once bitten by a poisonous spider or scorpion,
made his appearance annually wherever the merry notes of the tarantella
resounded. Inquisitive females joined the throng and caught the disease,
not indeed from the poison of the spider, but from the mental poison
which they eagerly received through the eye; and thus the cure of the
tarantati gradually became established as a regular festival of the
populace, which was anticipated with impatient delight.
Without attributing more to deception and fraud than to the peculiar
nature of a progressive mental malady, it may readily be conceived that
the cases of this strange disorder now grew more frequent. The
celebrated Matthioli, who is worthy of entire confidence, gives his
account as an eye-witness. He saw the same extraordinary effects
produced by music as Alexandro, for, however tortured with pain,
however hopeless of relief the patients appeared, as they lay stretched on
the couch of sickness, at the very first sounds of those melodies which
made an impression on them—but this was the case only with the
tarantellas composed expressly for the purpose—they sprang up as if
inspired with new life and spirit, and, unmindful of their disorder, began
to move in measured gestures, dancing for hour together without fatigue,
until, covered with a kindly perspiration, they felt a salutary degree of
lassitude, which relieved them for a time at least, perhaps even for a
whole year, from their defection and oppressive feeling of general
indisposition. Alexandro’s experience of the injurious effects resulting
from a sudden cessation of the music was generally confirmed by
Matthioli. If the clarinets and drums ceased for a single moment, which,
as the most skilful payers were tired out by the patients, could not but
happen occasionally, they suffered their limbs to fall listless, again sank
exhausted to the ground, and could find no solace but in a renewal of the
dance. On this account care was taken to continue the music until
exhaustion was produced; for it was better to pay a few extra musicians,
who might relieve each other, than to permit the patient, in the midst of
this curative exercise, to relapse into so deplorable a state of suffering.
The attack consequent upon the bite of the tarantula, Matthioli describes
as varying much in its manner. Some became morbidly exhilarated, so
that they remained for a long while without sleep, laughing, dancing, and
singing in a state of the greatest excitement. Others, on the contrary,
were drowsy. The generality felt nausea and suffered from vomiting, and
some had constant tremors. Complete mania was no uncommon
occurrence, not to mention the usual dejection of spirits and other
subordinate symptoms.

[...]

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.
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.
To conclude. Tarantism, as a real disease, has been denied in toto, and
stigmatised as an imposition by most physicians and naturalists, who in
this controversy have shown the narrowness of their views and their utter
ignorance of history. In order to support their opinion they have
instituted some experiments apparently favourable to it, but under
circumstances altogether inapplicable, since, for the most part, they
selected as the subjects of them none but healthy men, who were totally
uninfluenced by a belief in this once so dreaded disease. From individual
instances of fraud and dissimulation, such as are found in connection
with most nervous affections without rendering their reality a matter of
any doubt, they drew a too hasty conclusion respecting the general
phenomenon, of which they appeared not to know that it had continued
for nearly four hundred years, having originated in the remotest periods
of the Middle Ages. The most learned and the most acute among these
sceptics is Serao the Neapolitan. His reasonings amount to this, that he
considers the disease to be a very marked form of melancholia, and
compares the effect of the tarantula bite upon it to stimulating with spurs
a horse which is already running. The reality of that effect he thus
admits, and, therefore, directly confirms what in appearance only he
denies. By shaking the already vacillating belief in this disorder he is said
to have actually succeeded in rendering it less frequent, and in setting
bounds to imposture; but this no more disproves the reality of its
existence than the oft repeated detection of imposition has been able in
modern times to banish magnetic sleep from the circle of natural
phenomena, though such detection has, on its side, rendered more rare
the incontestable effects of animal magnetism. Other physicians and
naturalists have delivered their sentiments on tarantism, but as they have
not possessed an enlarged knowledge of its history their views do not
merit particular exposition. It is sufficient for the comprehension of
everyone that we have presented the facts from all extraneous
speculation.

[...]

CHAPTER III—THE DANCING MANIA IN ABYSSINIA
SECT. 1—TIGRETIER

Both the St. Vitus’s dance and tarantism belonged to the ages in which
they appeared. They could not have existed under the same latitude at
any other epoch, for at no other period were the circumstances which
prepared the way for them combined in a similar relation to each other,
and the mental as well as corporeal temperaments of nations, which
depend on causes such as have been stated, are as little capable of
renewal as the different stages of life in individuals. This gives so much
the more importance to a disease but cursorily alluded to in the
foregoing pages, which exists in Abyssinia, and which nearly resembles
the original mania of the St. John’s dancers, inasmuch as it exhibits a
perfectly similar ecstasy, with the same violent effect on the nerves of
motion. It occurs most frequently in the Tigre country, being thence call
Tigretier, and is probably the same malady which is called in Ethiopian
language Astaragaza. On this subject we will introduce the testimony of
Nathaniel Pearce, an eye-witness, who resided nine years in Abyssinia.
“The Tigretier,” he says he, “is more common among the women than
among the men. It seizes the body as if with a violent fever, and from
that turns to a lingering sickness, which reduces the patients to
skeletons, and often kills them if the relations cannot procure the proper
remedy. During this sickness their speech is changed to a kind of
stuttering, which no one can understand but those afflicted with the same
disorder. When the relations find the malady to be the real tigretier, they
join together to defray the expense of curing it; the first remedy they in
general attempt is to procure the assistance of a learned Dofter, who
reads the Gospel of St. John, and drenches the patient with cold water
daily for the space of seven days, an application that very often proves
fatal. The most effectual cure, though far more expensive than the
former, is as follows:—The relations hire for a certain sum of money a
band of trumpeters, drummers, and fifers, and buy a quantity of liquor;
then all the young men and women of the place assemble at the patient’s
house to perform the following most extraordinary ceremony.
“I was once called in by a neighbour to see his wife, a very young woman,
who had the misfortune to be afflicted with this disorder; and the man
being an old acquaintance of mine, and always a close comrade in the
camp, I went every day, when at home, to see her, but I could not be of
any service to her, though she never refused my medicines. At this time I
could not understand a word she said, although she talked very freely,
nor could any of her relations understand her. She could not bear the
sight of a book or a priest, for at the sight of either she struggled, and
was apparently seized with acute agony, and a flood of tears, like blood
mingled with water, would pour down her face from her eyes. She had
lain three months in this lingering state, living upon so little that it
seemed not enough to keep a human body alive; at last her husband
agreed to employ the usual remedy, and, after preparing for the
maintenance of the band during the time it would take to effect the cure,
he borrowed from all his neighbours their silver ornaments, and loaded
her legs, arms and neck with them.

“The evening that the band began to play I seated myself close by her
side as she lay upon the couch, and about two minutes after the trumpets
had begun to sound I observed her shoulders begin to move, and soon
afterwards her head and breast, and in less than a quarter of an hour she
sat upon her couch. The wild look she had, though sometimes she
smiled, made me draw off to a greater distance, being almost alarmed to
see one nearly a skeleton move with such strength; her head, neck,
shoulders, hands and feet all made a strong motion to the sound of the
music, and in this manner she went on by degrees, until she stood up on
her legs upon the floor. Afterwards she began to dance, and at times to
jump about, and at last, as the music and noise of the singers increased,
she often sprang three feet from the ground. When the music slackened
she would appear quite out of temper, but when it became louder she
would smile and be delighted. During this exercise she never showed the
least symptom of being tired, though the musicians were thoroughly
exhausted; and when they stopped to refresh themselves by drinking and
resting a little she would discover signs of discontent.
“Next day, according to the custom in the cure of this disorder, she was
taken into the market-place, where several jars of maize or tsug were set
in order by the relations, to give drink to the musicians and dancers.
When the crowd had assembled, and the music was ready, she was
brought forth and began to dance and throw herself into the maddest
postures imaginable, and in this manner she kept on the whole day.
Towards evening she began to let fall her silver ornaments from her neck,
arms, and legs, one at a time, so that in the course of three hours she
was stripped of every article. A relation continually kept going after her
as she danced, to pick up the ornaments, and afterwards delivered them
to the owners from whom they were borrowed. As the sun went down
she made a start with such swiftness that the fastest runner could not
come up with her, and when at the distance of about two hundred yards
she dropped on a sudden as if shot. Soon afterwards a young man, on
coming up with her, fired a matchlock over her body, and struck her upon
the back with the broad side of his large knife, and asked her name, to
which she answered as when in her common senses—a sure proof of her
being cured; for during the time of this malady those afflicted with it
never answer to their Christian names. She was now taken up in a very
weak condition and carried home, and a priest came and baptised her
again in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which ceremony
concluded her cure. Some are taken in this manner to the market-place
for many days before they can be cured, and it sometimes happens that
they cannot be cured at all. I have seen them in these fits dance with a
bruly, or bottle of maize, upon their heads without spilling the liquor, or
letting the bottle fall, although they have put themselves into the most
extravagant postures.

“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, and then I was
compelled to have a still nearer view of this strange 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, in the manner I have before mentioned, though it
took a much longer time to cure my wife than the woman I have just
given an account of. 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. On 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. Men are sometimes afflicted with
this dreadful disorder, but not frequently. Among the Amhara and Galla
it is not so common.”

Such is the account of Pearce, who is every way worthy of credit, and
whose lively description renders the traditions of former times respecting
the St. Vitus’s dance and tarantism intelligible, even to those who are
sceptical respecting the existence of a morbid state of the mind and body
of the kind described, because, in the present advanced state of
civilisation among the nations of Europe, opportunities for its
development no longer occur. The credibility of this energetic but by no
means ambitious man is not liable to the slightest suspicion, for, owing
to his want of education, he had no knowledge of the phenomena in
question, and his work evinces throughout his attractive and
unpretending impartiality.

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