If any particular melody was disliked by those affected, they indicated their displeasure by violent gestures expressive of aversion.

They could not endure false notes, and it is remarkable that uneducated boors, who had never in their lives manifested any perception of the enchanting power of harmony, acquired, in this respect, an extremely refined sense of hearing, as if they had been initiated into the profoundest secrets of the musical art.

It was a matter of every day's experience, that patients showed a predilection for certain tarantellas, in preference to others, which gave rise to the composition of a great variety of these dances.

They were likewise very capricious in their partialities for particular instruments; so that some longed for the shrill notes of the trumpet, others for the softest music produced by the vibration of strings.
Tarantism was at its greatest height in Italy in the seventeenth century, long after the St.Vitus's Dance of Germany had disappeared.

It was not the natives of the country only who were attacked by this complaint.
Foreigners of every colour and of every race, negroes, gipsies, Spaniards, Albanians, were in like manner affected by it.