ECONOMIC AND MEDICAL IMPORTANCE 243 



to be one of the jumping spiders that bites actively and then escapes 

 before it can be apprehended. None of the spiders from the United 

 States is known to have a similar hematoxin venom. 



The venom of other spiders contains substances that have a 

 special affinity for nervous tissue, and inhibit the normal activities 

 of important nerve centers by causing degeneration in the cells. 

 These neurotoxins often strike quickly at the respiratory centers, 

 causing severe systemic distress at points in the body remote from 

 the site of the bite. The best-known spiders with this type of venom 

 are the black widows, but various others from tropical regions are 

 now credited with possessing similar poisons. It is of very great 

 interest that the truly venomous spiders do not represent a single 

 group, but include a few representatives from several distantly 

 related lines. 



Few people have not heard of that large wolf spider of Europe 

 that takes its name from the city of Taranto in southern Italy. The 

 reputation of the "tarantula" has persisted through hundreds of 

 years, and around its venomous character and the peculiar methods 

 identified with the cure of its bite has been built a vast literature 

 of superstition and fiction. McCook has written: 



When one is bitten by this spider, so the story goes, at first 

 the pain is scarcely felt; but in a few hours after come on a 

 violent sickness, difficulty of breathing, fainting, and sometimes 

 trembling. Then he is seized with a sort of insanity. He weeps, 

 he dances, he trembles, cries, skips about, breaks forth into gro- 

 tesque and unnatural gestures, assumes the most extravagant 

 postures, and if he be not duly assisted and relieved after a few 

 days of torment, will sometimes expire. If he survives, at the 

 return of the season in which he was bitten, his madness returns. 



Some relief is found by divers antidotes, but the great specific 

 is music. At the sound of music the. victim begins the peculiar 

 movements which are known as the "tarantula dance," and con- 

 tinues them while the music continues, or until he breaks into 

 a profuse perspiration which forces out the venom. Thereupon 

 he sinks into a natural sleep from which he awakes weakened, 

 but recovered. 30 



And then, quoting an older writer, McCook continues: 

 "Alexander Alexandrinus proceedeth farther, affirming that he 

 30 H. C. McCook, op. cit., p. 262. 



