John's dancers,
while the violence of the intestinal disorder was indicated in
others by obstinate constipation or diarrhoea and vomiting. These
pitiable objects gradually lost their strength and their colour,
and creeping about with injected eyes, jaundiced complexions, and
inflated bowels, soon fell into a state of profound melancholy,
which found food and solace in the solemn tolling of the funeral
bell, and in an abode among the tombs of cemeteries, as is related
of the Lycanthropes of former times.
The persuasion of the inevitable consequences of being bitten by
the tarantula, exercised a dominion over men's minds which even
the healthiest and strongest could not shake off. So late 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.
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