Another strange disorder called tarantismus derived its name from the fact that it was supposed to be caused by the bite of the tarantula, a ground-spider common in Apulia, Italy. According to Hecker, the word tarantula is the same as terrantola, a name given by the Italians to a poisonous lizard of extraordinary endowments. The fear of the insect was so general that its bite was much oftener imagined than actually received. The disorder was probably in existence long before the fifteenth century, although the first account of it, that of Nicholas Perotti, refers to its occurrence in this century. Many symptoms followed the bite or supposed bite: the individuals became melancholy, stupefied, lost their senses, and, above all, were irresistibly impelled to dance until exhausted and almost lifeless. It was believed that the results of the bite could be cured, or at least much benefited, by dancing to a certain kind of music. Tarantism was at its height in the seventeenth century. To this day, in some parts of Italy, dances called tarantellas are performed with intricate figures to marked time. Abyssinia was visited by a dancing mania called the tigretier, which, according to Hecker, resembled the original mania of the St. John dancers. It exhibited a similar ecstasy. Those affected with it were cured by dancing to the music of trumpeters, drummers, fifers, etc. Levick says that the dancing mania of the fifteenth century is still kept in popular remembrance in some places by an annual festival, especially at Echtermarch, a small town in Luxembourg, where a jumping procession occurs annually on Whit Tuesday. In the year 1812, 12,678 dancers were in the procession. The Anabaptists, a religious sect of the sixteenth century, exhibited many of the wild and grotesque phenomena of hysteria or hystero-epilepsy. {224} The French Calvinists or Camisards, who appeared near the close of the seventeenth century, were also the subjects of ecstasy and of peculiar fits of trembling. These trembleurs experienced convulsive shocks in the head, the shoulders, the legs, and the arms, and were sometimes thrown violently down. About 1731 and later great crowds frequented the tomb of Deacon François de Paris, an advocate of the doctrines of Jansenius. It was reported that miracles were performed at his tomb: the sick were brought there, and often were seized with convulsions and pains, through which they were healed. The subjects of these attacks are sometimes spoken of as the Jansenist Convulsionnaires. The tomb was in the cemetery of St. Médard, and hence those who visited the place were also termed the Convulsionnaires of St. Médard. This disorder increased, multiplied, and disseminated, lasting with more or less intensity for fifty-nine years. Great immorality prevailed in the secret meetings of the believers.