The following is the account of the case as translated by Miss Vincent.
For obvious reasons the whole name was not given in the original paper,
and for similar reasons the date of the event and the birthplace of the
patient are not precisely indicated here.

[Giornale degli Ospitali, Luglio 21, 18-.]
REMARKABLE CASE OF TARANTISM.

"The great interest attaching to the very singular and exceptional
instance of this rare affection induces us to give a full account of the
extraordinary example of its occurrence in a patient who was the subject
of a recent medical consultation in this city.

"Signorino M . . . Ch . . . is the only son of a gentleman
travelling in Italy at this time. He is eleven years of age, of
sanguine-nervous temperament, light hair, blue eyes, intelligent
countenance, well grown, but rather slight in form, to all appearance in
good health, but subject to certain peculiar and anomalous nervous
symptoms, of which his father gives this history.

"Nine years ago, the father informs us, he was travelling in Italy with
his wife, this child, and a nurse. They were passing a few days in a
country village near the city of Bari, capital of the province of the
same name in the division (compartamento) of Apulia. The child was in
perfect health and had never been affected by any serious illness. On
the 10th of July he was playing out in the field near the house where the
family was staying when he was heard to scream suddenly and violently.
The nurse rushing to him found him in great pain, saying that something
had bitten him in one of his feet. A laborer, one Tommaso, ran up at the
moment and perceived in the grass, near where the boy was standing, an
enormous spider, which he at once recognized as a tarantula. He managed
to catch the creature in a large leaf, from which he was afterwards
transferred to a wide-mouthed bottle, where he lived without any food for
a month or more. The creature was covered with short hairs, and had a
pair of nipper-like jaws, with which he could inflict an ugly wound. His
body measured about an inch in length, and from the extremity of one of
the longest limbs to the other was between two and three inches. Such was
the account given by the physician to whom the peasant carried the great
spider.

"The boy who had been bitten continued screaming violently while his
stocking was being removed and the foot examined. The place of the bite
was easily found and the two marks of the claw