[Tarentism and its ethnographic fictions: the epistemology of the other's disease].
Tarantism is a cultural syndrome caused by a symbolic spider bite that was treated in Southern Italy by means of a musical and religious ritual. At the frontiers of theories of insanity this "disease" is the source of a rich and centuries-old scientific literature. This article proposes an epistemological analysis of the medical paradigms that have built the scientific representations of this phenomenon and that make it an anthropological mediation of cultural alterity of the Apulian territory and Southern Italy in general. Geographical or social determinism, popular irrationality, simulation and imitation appear as recurrent categories sounding the psychology of a "meridional soul" explained, till the studies of the 20th century about the south-European immigrants' diseases, in terms such as social anomy and mental alienation.
Bevilacqua
Salvatore
S
Institut universitaire d'histoire de la médecine et de la santé publique (IUHMSP), Chemin des Falaises 1, CH-1005 Lausanne. salvatore.bevilacqua@chuv.ch
D000818:Animals; D000884:Anthropology, Cultural / Q000266:history*; D002562:Ceremonial Behavior; D005260:Female; D049668:History, 15th Century; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D008519:Medicine, Traditional / Q000266:history*; D009146:Music / Q000266:history*; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000266:history*; D012068:Religion and Medicine; D065008:Scorpion Stings; D012605:Scorpions; D012640:Seizures / Q000266:history*; D001098:Spider Bites / Q000266:history*