The patient also had to select
among colored ribbons and concentrate on a band bearing the color of
the biting spider. Oftentimes, such treatment was administered in the
field where the mania first manifested.
The bite of the tarantula, called in many parts of Italy
"Taranta" (also named after the town of Taranto) was long - and
wrongly - thought to be the cause of the irresistible impulse to
dance. The victims, it was claimed, were trying to prance the venom
out of their bloodstream.
Other manic raves - such as "St. Vitus' or St. John's Dance", the
names given to episodes of rheumatoid chorea - were common in large
swathes of Europe between the 11th and 17th century. One legend has it
that in 1278, hundreds of people were successfully treated in a chapel
named after St. Vitus in Utrecht, Germany, close to the place where a
bridge plunged into the Maas river following some frantic dancing.
Hence "St. Vitus' dance". Other sources say that the
blasphemous frolickers drowned.
Manic dances - sometimes in the form of ecstatic but structured
rituals - often resulted in death. The dancers - many of them hailing
from foreign lands - were not clinically insane.
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