Note 229 — Chapter XI

The sedentary mode of life which prevailed among the higher classes of the Grecian women formerly occasioned diseases of the like kind. In the history of the Argives, about the time of Megapenthes, we find that their women, on account of their sedentary life, occasioned by their spinning, weaving, embroidering, and other labours of the like kind, and perhaps also by impure air in confined apartments, and by the use of wine, brought on disorders which had some resemblance to the real Tarantismus (not that occasioned by the bite of the tarantula). Bias, and Melampus the son of Amythares, were celebrated for curing this disease. Music and songs sung by handsome young men, kind treatment, and perhaps also dancing, brought back to Argos all the women, who had wandered to the forests and mountains. F.