8 



Poisonous Arthropods 



accotmts, which have come to our notice, of injuxy by North 

 American species. The resvdts 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 was 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 tinreason- 

 able fear of the bites of spiders 

 influenced the popular mind wa^ 

 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 

 bite of the scorpion. In its typical 

 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 restilting from these exertions was supposed to be the 

 only efificacious 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 syva.- 

 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 



The Italian tarantula (Lycosa tarantula) . 

 After Kobert. 



