AELUROPHOBIA

Southland Times, Issue 18848, 14 June 1920, Page 7

AELUROPHOBIA

STORIKri OF I’AT-HATKnS. Some : i::I■ •I; = i■ i;>l,■ have been subject to the .i■!i tit, r:V..-.i by Dr. J.'.hn Freeman the British Medic;.! Journal, which eau.-cs rs victim.- lit boh from the i "it c-n;-.-r it 1.-'.iy- the Manchester (it; irdhm •. A. hen ,y;r a a: M;h"r,hn;na after the Battle of Vi :t:;ra::i. Naimlnin was heat'd Hi the middle -.f the niitht shouting for heip. Th.e e.|ucrries rushed in, to find their mast or iiaikin:; busorrati- lunyi’s with his .-word at a car sheltered behind the bed curtains, but ins hand was so tremWuig with fear that he could not drive the animal away. Miss Louisa Merrick, who painted Lord Rouen.-' portrait in India, relates that she had to banish her kitten whenever the Com-mander-in-l'-hief came to her studio. "I wa? told." .-he adds, "that on one of Lord Robert.-' voyages home he asked to have the cal removed as stum as he came on board. An American passenger. unaware of Lord Roberts' identity, said to Lady Roberts. ‘Don’t you think that gentleman must have been a neiiiy in a former state'.'’ Lady Ruber;,-' reply is not recorded." Dr. Weir Mitchell calls th is complaint aelurophohia- a term of which the etymology puts back to Herodotus, When the father of hi.-.tory tirsc encountered the ctu in iiitypt he calk'd it "ailurns," or tail waver. Dr. Mitchell ,-ays that he personally knew thirty-one people who could delect the presence of a cat though it was neither seen nor heard by them, and he maintains that cats cau.-c nor, only asthma by; also violent sickness, temporary blindness, hysierical convuLsions, and lockjaw. L>r. Mitchell thinks that, aelurophohia is due to the existence of "olfactory emanations distinguished by some as odours ami by others felt not as odours but only in their results on nervous systems unusually and abnormally susceptible.” Bv some fierverse mstinct, cat.- are very fond of aelurophobes. liven strange cats, according to Dr Mitchell, seem to have an unusual desire to be near them, jutiiji on their laps, and follow them.