ate as the middle of
the sixteenth century, the celebrated Fracastoro found the robust bailiff
of his landed estate groaning, and, with the aspect of a person in the
extremity of despair, suffering the very agonies of death from a sting in
the neck, inflicted by an insect which was believed to be a tarantula. He
kindly administered without delay a potion of vinegar and Armenian bole,
the great remedy of those days for the plague of all kinds of animal
poisons, and the dying man was, as if by a miracle, restored to life and
the power of speech. Now, since it is quite out of the question that the
bole could have anything to do with the result in this case,
notwithstanding Fracastoro's belief in its virtues, we can only account
for the cure by supposing, that a confidence in so great a physician
prevailed over this fatal disease of the imagination, which would
otherwise have yielded to scarcely any other remedy except the
tarantella. Ferdinando was acquainted with women who, for thirty years
in succession, had overcome the attacks of this disorder by a renewal of
their annual dance--so long did they maintain their belief in the yet
undestroyed poison of the tarantula's bite, and so long did that mental
affection continue to exist, after it had ceased to depend on any
corporeal excitement.

Wherever we turn, we find that this morbid state of mind prevailed, and
was so supported by the opinions of the age, that it needed only a
stimulus in the bite of the tarantula, and the supposed certainty of its
very disastrous consequences, to originate this violent nervous disorder.
Even in Ferdinando's time there were many who altogether denied the
poisonous effects of the tarantula's bite, whilst they considered the
disorder, which annually set Italy in commotion, to be a melancholy
depending on the imagination. They dearly expiated this scepticism,
however, when they were led, with an inconsiderate hardihood, to test
their opinions by experiment; for many of them became the subjects of
severe tarantism, and even a distinguished prelate, Jo. Baptist Quinzato,
Bishop of Foligno, having allowed himself, by way of a joke, to be bitten
by a tarantula, could obtain a cure in no other way than by being,
through the influence of the tarantella, compelled to dance. Others
among the clergy, who wished to shut their ears against music, because
they considered dancing derogatory to their station, fell into a
dangerous state of illness by t