| in Germany, or of which the history is known to me, the most | | remarkable is the celebrated Convent-epidemic of the fifteenth | | century, which Cardan describes, and which peculiarly proves | | what I would here enforce. A nun in a German nunnery fell to | | biting all her companions. In the course of a short time all the | | nuns of this convent began biting each other. The news of this | | infatuation among the nuns soon spread, and it now passed from | | convent to convent, throughout a great part of Germany, principally | | Saxony and Brandenburg. It afterwards visited the nunneries of | | Holland, and at last the nuns had the biting mania even as far as | | Rome.”—_Zimmermann_ on Solitude, Vol. II. Leipsig. 1784.—_Transl. | | note._ | | | | [305] _Georg. Baglivi_, Diss. de Anatome, morsu et effectibus | | Tarantulæ. pp. 616, 617. Opp. Lugdun. 1710. 4to. | | | | [306] _Ferdinando_, p. 257. | | | | [307] Idem, pp. 256, 257, 258. | | | | [308] _Ferdinando_, p. 258. | | | | [309] _Adam Olearius._ Vermehrte Moscowitische und Persianische | | Reisebeschreibung. Travels in Muscovy and Persia. Schleswig, 1663. | | fol. Book IV. p. 496. | | | | [310] _Geor. Baglivi_, Dissertatio VI. de Anatome, morsu et | | effectibus Tarantulæ. (written in 1595.) Opera omnia, Lugdun. 1710. | | 4to. p. 599. | | | | [311] This physician once saw three patients, who were evidently | | suffering from a malignant fever, and whose illness was attributed | | by the bystanders to the bite of the tarantula, forced to dance by | | having music played to them. One of them died on the spot, and the | | two others very shortly after. Ch. 7. p. 616. | | | | [312] Among the instances in which imposture successfully taxes | | popular credulity, perhaps there is none more remarkable at the | | present day than that afforded by the Psylli of Egypt, a country | | which furnishes another illustration of our author’s remark at | | the commencement of the next chapter. This sect, according to the |