8 
Poisonous Arthropods 
accounts, which have come to our notice, of injury by North 
American species. The results have served, mainly, to empha¬ 
size the straits to which reporters are sometimes driven when 
there is a dearth of news. The accounts are usually vague and lack¬ 
ing in any definite clue for locating the supposed victim. In the 
comparatively few cases where the patient, or his physician, could 
be located, there was either no claim that the injury wa% due to 
spider venom, or there was no evidence to support the belief. 
Rarely, there was evidence that a secondary blood poisoning, such 
as might be brought about by the prick of a pin, or by any mechani¬ 
cal injury, had followed the bite of a spider. Such instances have 
no bearing on the question of the 
venomous nature of these forms. 
The extreme to which unreason¬ 
able fear of the bites of spiders 
influenced the popular mind was 
evidenced by the accepted explana¬ 
tion of the remarkable dancing 
mania, or tarantism, of Italy during 
the Middle Ages. This was a ner¬ 
vous disorder, supposed to be due 
to the bite of a spider, the European 
tarantula (fig. 4), though it was 
also, at times, attributed to the 
4. The Italian tarantula (Lycosa tarantula), bite of the SCOrpion. In its tvpical 
form, it was characterized by so 
great a sensibility to music that under its influence the victims 
indulged in the wildest and most frenzied dancing, until they sank 
to the ground utterly exhausted and almost lifeless. The profuse 
perspiring resulting from these exertions was supposed to be the 
only efficacious remedy for the disease. Certain forms of music 
were regarded as of especial value in treating this tarantism, and 
hence the name of “ tarantella” was applied to them. Our frontis¬ 
piece, taken from Athanasius Kircher’s Magnes sive de Arte Magnetica, 
1643 ed., represents the most commonly implicated spider and illus¬ 
trates some of what Fabre has aptly designated as “medical 
choreography.” 
The disease was, in reality, a form of hysteria, spreading by sym¬ 
pathy until whole communities were involved, and was paralleled by 
the outbreaks of the so-called St. Vitus’s or St. John’s dance, which 
