These are the principal passages which antiquity furnishes, relative to the medicinal effects of music; in considering which, reliance is placed on the judgment of M. Burette, whose opinions will come with the more weight, as he had not only long made the music of the ancients his particular study, but was a physician by profession. This writer, in a dissertation on the subject, has examined and discussed many of the stories above related, concerning the effects of music in the cure of diseases. He allows it to be possible, and even probable, that music, by reiterated strokes and vibrations given to the nerves, fibres, and animal spirits, may be of use in the cure of certain diseases; yet he by no means supposes that the music of the ancients possessed this power in a greater degree than the modern music, but rather that a very coarse and vulgar music is as likely to operate effectually on such occasions as the most refined and perfect. The savages of America pretend to perform these cures by the music and jargon of their imperfect instruments; and in Apulia, where the bite of the tarantula is pretended to be cured by music, which excites a desire to dance, it is by an ordinary tune, very coarsely performed.[119] Baglivi refines on the doctrine of effluvia, by ascribing his cures of the bite of the tarantula to the peculiar undulation any instrument or tune makes by its strokes in the air; which, vibrating upon the external parts of the patient, is communicated to the whole nervous system, and produces that happy alteration in the solids and fluids which so effectually contributes to the cure. The contraction of the solids, he says, impresses new mathematical motions and directions to the fluids; in one or both of which is seated all distempers, and without any other help than a continuance of faith, will alter their quality; a philosophy as wonderful and intricate as the nature of the poison it is intended to expel; but which, however, supplies this observation, that, if the particles of sound can do so much, the effluvia of amulets may do more.