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 and all kinds of animal poisons, and the dying man was, as if by a miracle, restored to life and the power of speech[299]. Now, since it is quite out of the question that the bole could have any thing to do with the result in this case, notwithstanding Fracastoro’s belief in its virtues, we can only account for the cure by supposing, that a confidence in so great a physician prevailed over this fatal disease of the imagination, which would otherwise have yielded to scarcely any other remedy except the Tarantella. Ferdinando was acquainted with women who, for thirty years in succession, had overcome the attacks of this disorder by a renewal of their annual dance—so long did they maintain their belief in the yet undestroyed poison of the Tarantula’s bite, and so long did that mental affection continue to exist, after it had ceased to depend on any corporeal excitement[300].