violent than those unexampled storms which arose at the time of
the Black Death in the middle of the fourteenth century had set
the insect world in motion; for the spider is little if at all
susceptible of those cosmical influences which at times multiply
locusts and other winged insects to a wonderful extent, and compel
them to migrate.

The symptoms which Perotti enumerates as consequent on the bite of
the tarantula agree very exactly with those described by later
writers. Those who were bitten, generally fell into a state of
melancholy, and appeared to be stupefied, and scarcely in
possession of their senses. This condition was, in many cases,
united with so great a sensibility to music, that at the very
first tones of their favourite melodies they sprang up, shouting
for joy, and danced on without intermission, until they sank to
the ground exhausted and almost lifeless. In others, the disease
did not take this cheerful turn. They wept constantly, and as if
pining away with some unsatisfied desire, spent their days in the
greatest misery and anxiety. Others, again, in morbid fits of
love, cast their longing looks on women, and instances of death
are recorded, which are said to have occurred under a paroxysm of
either laughing or weeping.

From this description, incomplete as it is, we may easily gather
that tarantism, the essential symptoms of which are mentioned in
it, could not have originated in the fifteenth century, to which
Perotti's account refers; for that author speaks of it as a well-
known malady, and states that the omission to notice it by older
writers was to be ascribed solely to the want of education in
Apulia, the only province probably where the disease at that time