To conclude. Tarantism, as a real disease, has been denied _in toto_, and stigmatized 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 connexion 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[313]. 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[314]. 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[315]; 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 incontestible effects of animal magnetism. Other physicians and naturalists[316] 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 every one, that we have presented the facts freed from all extraneous speculation. CHAPTER III. DANCING MANIA IN ABYSSINIA. SECT. 1.—TIGRETIER.