It might hence seem that, owing to the conduct of patients of this
description, so much of fraud and falsehood would be mixed up with
the original disorder that, having passed into another complaint,
it must have been itself destroyed. This, however, did not happen
in the first half of the seventeenth century; for, as a clear
proof that tarantism remained substantially the same and quite
unaffected by hysteria, there were in many places, and in
particular at Messapia, fewer women affected than men, who, in
their turn, were in no small proportion led into temptation by
sexual excitement. In other places, as, for example, at Brindisi,
the case was reversed, which may, as in other complaints, be in
some measure attributable to local causes. Upon the whole it
appears, from concurrent accounts, that women by no means enjoyed
the distinction of being attacked by tarantism more frequently
than men.
It is said that the cicatrix of the tarantula bite, on the yearly
or half-yearly return of the fit, became discoloured, but on this
point the distinct testimony of good observers is wanting to
deprive the assertion of its utter improbability.
It is not out of place to remark here that, about the same time
that tarantism attained its greatest height in Italy, the bite of
venomous spiders was more feared in distant parts of Asia likewise
than it had ever been within the memory of man.
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