TARANTISM AND THE HOMEOPATHIC REMEDY TARENTULA

Tarentulas belong to the spider (Arachnida) family. Tarentulas are nocturnal predators, killing their prey including birds, lizards, snakes, frogs and toads by injecting venom through their fangs.

The town Taranto, in Southern Italy, gave the spider its name. The bite of this spider was once believed to cause a fatal condition called tarantism. The illness was first recorded in medical journals in the 14th century. Occurring every summer for three hundred years, Tarantism reached its peak in the 17th century. According to the local belief, the only cure was to dance to certain music — tarantella — for days or even weeks.

Actually, the bite of this spider is not even particularly painful, let alone life-threatening. Because proteins are included when a toxin is injected, some individuals may suffer severe symptoms due to an allergic reaction rather than to the venom.

In the 1600s, people discovered that these spiders were virtually harmless. Many then concluded that the whole phenomenon of Tarantism was simply an excuse for a wild party. However, it is now suspected that there has been an entirely different kind of spider in the fields around Taranto that caused fairly severe bites (one candidate being the malmignatte or Mediterranean black widow), but the tarentulas, being wolf spiders, were fairly large, out in the open, and were frequently seen running around, which drew attention to them, and so they got the blame. Join that factor with the belief in tarantism and the supposed need for wild dancing to prevent sure death, and the fearsome world-wide reputation of the tarantula was guaranteed.

The Lycosa Tarentula’s bite was said to cause hallucinogenic effects. In some versions of the legend, the venom itself caused the dancer to move uncontrollably. The condition that results from the bite of Lycosa Tarentula was common in southern Italy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many people have suggested that the whole business was a deceit to evade religious proscriptions against dancing.

The amatory dance is a very important feature in the spider’s romance life. Several males will dance for one female and it is her, who then picks her chosen one to reproduce. The dance is also important for the Tarentula patient as his symptoms are influenced by music.

Tarentula cases are sometimes caused by anger, bad news, emotional excitement, excessive joy or disappointed love.

All these possible causes suggest that in a Tarentula case, unexpectedly the rhythm or the balance get upset. Tarentula’s nervous costume is tensed, like a coiled spring ready to jump any time it is released. And this is exactly what Tarentula does: the least emotional / mental excitement brings the normal flow of emotions and thoughts in him to a stop or changes the direction and he ‘jumps’.

Symptoms. In the 17th century, Tarantella was recommended after a bite of a tarentula; indeed, such a bite causes violent movements of the muscles that remind one of an eccentric or macabre dance. Tarentula is one of the hastiest remedies in the homeopathic Materia Medica, if not the hastiest of them. E.g. The patient suffers extreme restlessness of his legs and of the whole body or tosses and turns in bed all night long. Not only is this restlessness of a physical kind, but emotional and mental as well.

Tarentula patients are impatient with themselves as well as with fellow humans, especially when they deal with individuals that are slower. The reason for this impatient restlessness is partly to set free the enormous energy that inhibits Tarentula and partly that these are individuals driven from anxiety.

The excitement of Tarentula can go from extreme gayety and much singing (as far as) to hysteria, when the state of insanity becomes more severe, and can generally cause all kinds of strange, paradoxical behavior.

Since Tarentula’s nervous costume is so tensed, so under pressure, music can have a very soothing effect on him. Music comes along with rhythm and brings relaxation of the mind and the body for Tarentula, though the ‘wrong’ music can aggravate the complaints as it will be perceived as a disturbance. The music needs to be of the same rhythm as the patient himself and then his thoughts and his movements will be graceful, flowing and elegant. This is, why Tarentula sometimes sings his own song

    Tarentula is afraid, that he gets out of the rhythm that keeps him in balance. He fears, something could go wrong or that he can’t get all work of the day done. This is, besides the nervous excitement, the other reason he becomes so fast in everything and is so restless.

    When the restlessness of Tarentula gets slowed down or even stopped by external circumstances, he can become very aggressive and violent. The patient then develops vandalism, which he can hide very well at first. However, even the smart Tarentula patient can’t hide his anger for long and the stronger the pressure grows, the more his rhythm is disturbed, the angrier he becomes and his anger will eventually turn into rage with a desire to even kill. Tarentula’s anger always has a true exciting cause and will not get out of hand that much. The patient will stop raging, when this cause is eliminated. The greater the disturbance of his inner rhythm is the angrier will the patient be.

    There are strange sensations as if his legs were cut off or he is floating in air. Both show somewhat the affinity to spiders: 8 legs that are so important to crawl along the threads in the spider’s net and the feeling of floating in air, when swinging on these threads. Tarentula might also feel smaller than he actually is.

    In emergencies Tarentula most often is used for epilepsy, chorea, spasms and affections of the heart (angina pectoris).

    Constitution. Hering considers Tarentula suited to “nervous, hysterical patients, who are subject to choreic affections” and people that have a “mischievous and destructive tendency”. Sometimes in Tarentula, one pupil is much dilated, the other contracted. The eyes might be glassy, red and have blue circles around them. The face itself is flushed or pale / earthy, possibly in strong contrast with the purple neck and shows the expression of terror. The hands might be hot and sweaty.

    Physical Symptoms

    • Alternating Symptoms
    • Discharge of blood alternately with leucorrhea
    • Burning heat alternating icy coldness that causes trembling & shaking (in fever)
    • Concomitant Symptoms
    • Constrictive headache with pain in uterus
    • Headache with restless, has to move about
    • Vertigo with bad taste in mouth and headache
    • Vertigo accompanied by incomplete erection of penis
    • Snapping and pain in ear with hiccough
    • Toothache with hiccough
    • Tonsillitis with fear & sensation of suffocation
    • Throat complaints or cough accompanied by smarting in eye
    • Gastric complaints accompanied by neuralgic ones (head, face, ears, teeth etc)
    • Pain in uterus with constrictive headache
    • Faint feeling in stomach with frontal headache
    • Nausea with dizziness
    • Lancinating pain in spleen, with pain in stomach and uterus
    • Hard stool with blood
    • Profuse diarrhoea with prostration, nausea, vomiting and fainting
    • Constipation with involuntary passing of urine on coughing
    • Menses accompanied by toothache
    • Uterine trouble with bearing down pains
    • Precordial anxiety with tremulous beating of heart
    • Heat of face and palms
    • Intermittent fever with choreic convulsions

    Characteristic, peculiar Symptoms

    • Desire to pull out his hair on account of burning heat in scalp
    • objects seen with the left eye appear bright red
    • Cough > smoking
    • Stools occur on washing the head
    • Wetting hands in cold water <>
    • Cannot keep quiet anywhere or in any position
    • Right sided complaints
    • Sensation of cold water being poured over a body part (eye, head, inside of throat etc)
    • Complaints > music & dancing (fast)
    • Desires sand, ashes or cuttlefish, spiced food and craves cigarettes


    Source: Hpathy.com