Word: tarantulas
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...York Central Railroad's fabulous Founder Cornelius Vanderbilt was burdened by the railroad's presidency for only one year (1918-19). In 1904 he started and refereed the first Vanderbilt Cup Auto Race (the winner averaged 52 m.p.h.), in World War I commanded the U.S.S. Tarantula with the hand of a longtime yachtsman. Famed as the footloose owner of the $3,000,000 diesel yacht Alva (his 1941 gift to the Navy), he studied hard for his master's papers, and could legally have skippered a Queen Mary in any ocean...
...Vitus's dance because a visit to the saint's chapel sometimes worked a cure. The modern medical name for it is tarantism, after the wild Italian folk dance, the tarantella. The Italians have a common belief that the tarantella drives out the poison of a tarantula's bite by causing perspiration, and that the dance was named for the spider. Actually, both dance and spider were named for the city of Taranto, which was hit hard by the dancing mania...
...that if a suitable substance could be found, the same sort of thing could be done deliberately. After much experiment he chose Plexiglas, a mixture of monomers (methyl methacrylate, ethyl methacrylate, etc.) which hardens into a glassy plastic. In blocks of this stuff he immured small dead frogs, a tarantula, the bones of a human hand (see cuts); a rattlesnake's head, complete with fangs, a peacock feather, an iridescent butterfly, a garter snake, flowers, ears of corn, ears of barley. Secretary Wallace, Dr. Sando's chief, keeps a 13-inch ear of hybrid corn, forever young...
...Spokane, a tarantula crawled over Grocer James Wilson's little finger. Because James Wilson had a horror of tarantulas, an exaggerated fear of their venom, he seized a butcher's cleaver, cropped off his finger...
...together by famed Medical Historian Dr. Henry Ernest Sigerist, included a "Frottola" by 16th-century Composer Marchetto Cara, written to help cure the Marchese of Mantua of syphilis; a piece played in the 17th Century to cure tarantism, popularly believed to be caused by the bite of a tarantula; hymnlike music originally addressed to St. Sebastian, who was believed to protect the faithful against the plague...