Lewis writes on the "medieval dancing mania called tarantism"
"the incidence of tarantism has greatly declined [but] it still survives today in an attenuated form in the more remote and backward villages of southern Italy"
"tarantism was long considered by many to be a toxic bite of the tarantula spider and not involving any mystical aetiology. More recent research has established that there are two types of tarantula spider, and that only one of these is actually venomous with a poisonous bite capable of producing the symptoms encountered in tarantism. Paradoxically, it is not this toxic spider, which is larger and looks more threatening, that figures predominantly in tarantism"
81: "the revelries of the tarantists certainly had a highly erotic character, echoing the frenzied dancing of the maenads of Dionysus from which there is some reason to suppose they may actually have developed"