Account of the epidemic religious monomania in Sweden in the years 1841 and 1842 / by the editor.

  • Smith, Samuel Hanbury, 1810-1894.
Date:
[1850]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Account of the epidemic religious monomania in Sweden in the years 1841 and 1842 / by the editor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    out of tune ; upon the discovery of which, one would not be- lieve what vehement sighings and anguish at heart they are seized with ; and in this case they continue till the instrument is got into tune again, and the dance renewed. This way of dancing commonly holds four days, it seldom reaches to the sixth. According to the above description, the patients very soon fall into a condition analogous to that caused by the bite of venomous serpents, from which state they are at once aroused by music, and by after violent exercise with profuse sweating, and intervals of profound repose, are cured of their disease. Reasoning a priori, we should have said that such a method of cure would be very likely to prove successful in such a case. But let us see what the same author says in another place: A few hours after the bite, the patient is seized with a great difficulty of breathing, a heavy anguish of heart, and a pro- digious sadness, &c. The malady, after the sharp lit of the violent symptoms, which appear for the first days, is over, ends at last in a peculiar kind of melancholy which continually hangs upon the sick person, till by dancing, or singing, or change of age, those violent impressions are quite extirpa- ted. Again, he states that the disease like the German chorea Sancti Viti, returned about the same time of year that the patient was stung; and seems much at a loss to under- stand either how it was produced, or in what manner it was cured. He appears inclined, indeed, to account for the latter, by the profuse sweatings induced by the violent exercise ; but he admits that the physicians could not cure it by artificial sweatings. Sauvages, a great nosological authority, appears to have suspected that some error had been committed either in observation, or at all events in explanation; for he begins by giving the opinions of authorities up to his epoch, (they are before the reader,) and then very distinctly says, several experiments have been made at Rome, with the tarantula ; its bite causes pain, the parts swell and become livid, and in a few days the tumour is covered with a blackish scab. These symptoms are accompanied with sighing, cardialgia, or op- pression, at the heart, and afterwards pains in all the articula- lations ; but no one has ever observed that those bitten have danced, or evinced any desire to dance. They have been cured by the use of the ordinary diaphoretics. Again he shrewdly remarks, no author mentions tarantismus before the fifteenth century, although the tarantula was known long before. There are numbers in Sicily, Malta, Africa, and the Southern provinces of Apulia. However, we think he goes too far when he asserts, that the effects of the bite of the tar-