Savory - Arachnida 1977

290 IV. DE ARACHNOLOGIA
seventeenth century it was declining, and finally there remained only
the tarantella, a graceful Italian dance and the last vestige by which it
might be recalled.
The symptoms of tarantism, according to contemporary and later
writers, were indeed alarming. The work of l'\unez, mentioned below,
devoted several pages to describing them, and scarcely an organ or a
part of the body seems to have been exempt from the effects of the
venom. Pain and swelling, paralysis, nausea and vomiting, lassitude
and delirium, palpitation and fainting, continued priapism and shameless
exhibitionism are all included, together with acute melancholic
depression, ending, unless treatment was provided, in death.
The drugs in use at that time had no effect, and alcohol, even in
quantity, did not produce intoxication. The only cure was dancing,
prolonged and strenuous, inspired by appropriate music and resulting in
copious sweating.
A phenomenon of this nature was bound to excite interest, and for
several decades descriptions of authenticated cases of tarantism alternated
with equally confident denials that the attacks were anything
more than midsummer madness or general hysteria. The first writer to
gather these and to offer a reasoned discussion of the disease
was Ferdinand Epiphane ofMessina, hut a more ambitious treatise was
that of Baglivi.
Georges Baglivi was a well known Italian physician and his work,
"De Anatomia, 1v1orsu et Effectihus Tarantulae", was published in
1696. It occupies only 42 pages and contains what appears to be the
first published drawing of the tarantula spider itself. Baglivi described
all the symptoms, credible and incredible, various methods of treatment,
notes the greater frequency of the disease injuly, and discusses various
methods of treatment, including music. His work, though short, is of
interest since it is the first discussion of the matter by a writer of scientific
experience and of a more than local reputation.
He believed that tarentism was a true clinical entity resulting from the
bite of a particular spider. This was the opinion of the time, and in
Britain the Hon. Robert Boyle in 1686 wrote that his own doubts had
been replaced by conviction.
Fifty years later Dr Richard Mead contributed to Eleazar Albin's
"Natural History of Spiders" a four-page section "Of the Tarantula",
and in his later writings expressed himself at greater length. He wrote
that in winter the bite of the spider is harmless, but that in the dog-days
the patient is soon "seized by a violent sickness, difficulty of breathing
and universal faintness being asked what the ail is makes no reply, or
with a querulous voice and melancholy look". This condition is not
34. MEDICAL ARACHNOLOGY 291
"relieved by the usual alexipharmic and cordial medicines" and "music
alone performs the cure".
"They dance", says :Mead, "three or four hours, then rest. At this
sport they usually spend twelve hours a day, and it continues three or
four days; by which time they are generally freed from all their symptoms,
which do nevertheless attack 'em about the same time the next
year". :Mead also reported that the tarantati, while dancing "talk and
act obscenely and rudely, take great pleasure in playing with vine
with naked S'.vords and red cloths" and "cannot bear the sight of
anything black".
Disbelief in the reality of tarantism was first expressed by N. Fairfax
in the 'Philosophical Transactions" of the Royal Society in 1667; and
the opinion was more forcibly expressed in 1671, that is 24 years earlier
than Baglivi's treatise, in a lettn from a Neapolitan physician Thomas
Cornelius. He said that the tarantati were either malingerers or they
were wanton young women, described as dolci di sale, or half-wits. The
case tarantism was fully argued by Dr Francesco Serao in
1742. His book, "Della Tarantola osia Falangio di Paglia", was published
in Naples and contained 284 pages.
The conclusion however, unavoidable, that affliction with tarantism
must have brought some advantage to the victims, for the phenomenon
lasted for a time, and having, as one might say, exploited
Italy, to the full, it reappeared in Spain.
The first published account of Spanish tarantism was a record of six
cases described in a "Tratado del Tarantismo" by Dr D. Manuel
Iraneta y Jauregut. This was in 1785, or 47 years after Seras's denial
and 89 years later than Baglivi. Iraneta's work of 121 pages was, however,
but a trifle when compared with that of Francisco Xavier Cid,
"Tarantismo Observadoin , published in .Madrid in 1787.
Like Baglivi, Cid was a physician of some eminence. He wrote an
authoritative account of the disease, based on 38 cases which, he satisfied
himself, were well authenticated. He showed that the Spanish and
Italian forms were identical, and he accepted as proven the reality of
tarantism and the curative power of music. Indeed, he ended an
interesting and erudite work with a chapter on "The Philosophy of
Music".
Cid's book inspired a number of Spanish doctors to write on the same
subject; among them may be mentioned Mestre y l\1arzal, 1843;
~'lendez Alvaro, 1846 and Ch. Ozanan, 1856.
The most comprehensive work on tarantism is J. Nunez's "Etude
Medicale sur le Venin de la Tarantule", published in Paris in 1866. A
book of 168 pages, it begins with a historical review of the records of
the complaint, and emphazise three points-that tarantism is a real