Reading my text-book, I found that the original tarantula spider (from
which the Australian species are misnamed) is so called from the town of
Tarentum, in Italy. Among the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood
it was a deeply-rooted belief that if any one was bitten by a tarantula
he would be instantly inflicted with a singular disease known as
tarantismus, which exhibited itself in two extremes, the one being a
profound and silent melancholy and the other a continual convulsive
movement of the whole body. It was thought that this disease could only
be cured by music, and that a certain tune was needful in each particular
case. This was the legend.

It will be remembered that among the tales told by "a great traveller" to
Pepys was one on the subject of the tarantula. He says that all the
harvest long (about which time they are most busy) there are fiddlers go
up and down the fields everywhere in expectation of being hired by
those who are stung.

Of the disease there is no doubt, and that it could be cured by dancing
stimulated by music is a natural conclusion. Each patient indulged in
long and violent exercise, which produced profuse perspiration; he then
fell exhausted, slept calmly, and awoke cured.

For the best part of a day Tom lay stretched on his face in the sun. Like
David the psalmist, he refused to be comforted. A profound and silent
melancholy subdued the wandering spirit which invariably manifests
itself on Sunday. He just "sweated out" the day he usually devotes to
hunting, and on Monday was himself again, save for a greyish blue tinge
encircling each of the little wounds on his arm.