The English clergyman and writer, Hugh Reginald Haweis, extols music as a healthy outlet for emotion, and as especially adapted for young ladies. Joy flows naturally into ringing harmonies, says he, while music has the subtle power to soften melancholy, by presenting it with its fine emotional counterpart. A good play on the piano has not unfrequently taken the place of a good cry upstairs, and a cloud of ill-temper has often been dispersed by a timely practice. One of Schubert's friends used to say that, although very cross before sitting down to his piano, a long scramble-duet through a symphony or through one of his own delicious and erratic pianoforte duets, always restored him to good humor.[196:1] For many years the subject of musico-therapy has been discussed editorially in the columns of the "London Lancet." We give some statements emanating from this authority. Music influences both brain and heart through the spinal cord, probably on account of its vibratory or wave motion, which stimulates the nerve-centres. . . . It acts as a refreshing mental stimulant and restorative. Therefore it braces depressed nervous tone and indirectly through the nervous system reaches the tissues. It is of most use in depressed mental conditions. . . . The value of music as a therapeutic agent cannot yet be precisely stated, but it is no quack's nostrum. It is an intangible, but effective aid of medicine. It seems strange that the healing influence of music has not been more thoroughly studied from a psychological standpoint, and utilized, when one is mindful of the great store of evidence, gathered for centuries, of the marked power of this agent upon the lower animals, and of its worth as a mental, and therefore as a physical tonic and stimulant, for human beings. A chief reason for this neglect has been ascribed to the materialistic views which have prevailed in therapeutics. It was formerly believed quite generally, in Italy and elsewhere, that music was the only efficient cure for the effects of the bite of the tarantula, a species of large spider, so called from the city of Taranto. These effects consisted of a feigned or imaginary disease known as tarantism, which was prevalent in Apulia and other portions of southern Italy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Tarantism was an epidemic nervous affection characterized by involuntary dancing, gesticulations, contortions and cries. In spite, however, of all that has been written on this subject by physicians and historians, it appears to be a fact that the bite of the tarantula is not more venomous than that of other large spiders. Indeed, Dr. H. Chomet, who diligently investigated the matter, never succeeded in finding a case of tarantism, nor was he able even to obtain a glimpse of one of these insects.