All that can be said about such a dread is that it exists, that it is unreasoning, that some patients have been known by discipline of mind to overcome the abhorrence to a great degree but never quite entirely. In this regard, however, it must not be forgotten that there are many things abhorrent to human nature that seem impossible to overcome the aversion for, yet discipline does much to relieve them. For instance, the handling of dead bodies so familiar to physicians brings with it an aversion that we never quite get over and which resumes most of its original strength with disuse, but that can be overcome to such an extent as to make pathological work produce very little aversion. Even Virchow, after all his years of occupation with pathological material, confessed toward the end of his life, that whenever he was away from his work for a few months his aversion had to be overcome anew.
The Spectator on Dreads.—There might be a tendency to think that these curious dreads came only as the result of the individualistic over-occupation with self and the introspective sophistication of the modern time, but the dread is not confined to our time nor special to it in any way, for we find Shakespeare talking of those who cannot bear a harmless, necessary cat. A number of other writers of different periods refer to it. As in so many other things The Spectator reflects his time in this and so we have a letter with regard to the dread of cats. It would not have been a subject for discussion in one of these popular communications only that the writer felt that a good many people would realize how like it was to things that they themselves knew of. In number 609 the following letter, supposed to be from a correspondent, seems worth giving in full, because it touches on other subjects in which uncontrollable, unreasoning feeling plays a role:
I wish you would write a philosophical paper about natural antipathies, with a word or two concerning the strength of imagination. ... A story that relates to myself on this subject may be thought not unentertaining, especially when I assure you that it is literally true. I had long made love to a lady, in the possession of whom I am now the happiest of mankind, whose hand I should have gained with much difficulty without the assistance of a cat. You must know then that my most dangerous rival had so strong an aversion to this species, that he infallibly swooned away at the sight of that harmless creature. My friend, Mrs. Lucy, her maid, having a greater respect for me and my purse than she had for my rival, always took care to pin the tail of a cat under the gown of her mistress, whenever she knew of his coming; which had such an effect that every time he entered the room, he looked more like one of the figures in Mrs. Salmon's wax-work than a desirable lover. In short, he grew sick of her company, which the young lady taking notice of (who no more knew why than he did), she sent me a challenge to meet her in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, which I joyfully accepted; and have, amongst other pleasures, the satisfaction of being praised by her for my stratagem.
Cat Fear and Furs.—This dread of cats is sometimes exhibited to a surprising degree under rather unexpected circumstances. For instance, it is not unusual, since the fashion for the longer-haired furs came in, to find that some of these patients cannot wear certain supposedly elegant furs, since they are really dyed catskin. At times this is not suspected until other possible causes for the discomfort have been eliminated. Some women cannot even bear to be near catskins in muffs and other such furs, though the imitation [{619}] may be so good as to deceive any but an expert, and they apparently had no suspicion at the beginning of the presence of cat fur near them. I have been told by a physician the story of a man, poignantly sensitive to cats, who purchased a fur-lined coat and found it quite impossible to wear it because of the sensations it produced in him, though he had no suspicion of any connection between cats and the fur when he purchased it.
Recognition of Presence.—Why this dread of cats occurs and, above all, the reason for the ability to know that a cat is near when the animal is concealed and others are not at all aware of its presence, or that its fur should produce a disagreeable sensation, is not easy to decide. Its discussion is suggestive for other forms of dreads, for there are probably like refinements of sensation, normal and abnormal, connected with them. Much has been said about this as a reversion to powers possessed by man in a savage state when there was necessity for guarding against animal attacks. Unfortunately for any such supposition as this, these people, who are most fearful of cats, that is, of the ordinary domestic animal, have no uneasiness in the presence of the huge cats in the menageries—the lions and the tigers. It is with regard to these that such a specialization of scent would be particularly valuable for men. There seems no doubt but that it is an odor or a sensation allied to an odor, though perhaps below the ordinary threshold of recognition as such, that enables these people to detect the presence of a cat. Dr. Weir Mitchell in his article on "Ailurophobia and The Power to Be Conscious of the Cat as Near While Unseen and Unheard," in the Transactions of the Association of American Physicians, 1905, discusses odor in this connections as follows:
To be influenced by an olfactory impression of which (as odor) the subject rests unconscious, may seem an hypothesis worthy of small respect and beyond power of proof. Nevertheless it seems to me reasonable. There are sounds beyond the hearing of certain persons. If they ever cause effects we do not know. There are rays of which we are not conscious as light or heat, except through the effects to which they give rise. There may be olfactory emanations distinguished by some as odors and by others felt, not as odors, but only in their influential results on nervous systems unusually and abnormally susceptible. No other explanation seems to me available, and this gains value from certain contributory facts.
We must admit that all animals and human beings emit emanations which are recognizable by many animals and are in wild creatures protectively valuable.
This delicate recognition is commonly lost in mankind, but some abnormal beings like Laura Bridgeman and a perfectly normal lad I once saw, have possessed the power of distinguishing by smell the handkerchiefs of a family after they had been washed and ironed. In this lad I made a personal test of his power to pick out by their odor from a heap of clean handkerchiefs mine and those of others, the latter two belonging to his father and mother.
I have seen a woman, well known to me, who can distinguish by mere odor the gloves worn by relatives or friends. This lady, who likes cats as pets, is able to detect by its odor the presence of a cat when I and others cannot.
Two French observers believe that they have proved the sense of olfaction to be nine times more acute in women than in men.
So far as the present paper might serve in evidence, I should be inclined to say that the sense of smell was keener in women than in men, but as to this there is extreme diversity of opinion and the whole question awaits further investigation. [Footnote 48]
[Footnote 48: This question of the varying acuteness of smell in different people is very interesting to the psychotherapeutist for diagnosis and therapy. We have a number of striking cases of very acute olfactory power. This is what might be expected since animals whose respiratory and smell apparatuses are very like our own show extreme differences. The extent to which human power to recognize odors can go is marvelous. In his "Thinking, Feeling, Doing," Prof. Scripture says: "I have a case—reported by a perfectly competent witness who lived for years with the person mentioned—of a woman in charge of a boarding school who always sorted the boys' linen after the wash by the odor alone." Personally, I have sometimes wondered whether this power, like that of feeling in the blind, could not be developed. The blind are supposed actually to bring about an evolution in their nerves of feeling. No such thing happens, however. An examination of them by means of an esthesiometer shows that their nerves are no better developed than those of other people, though they may be able to recognize much minuter differences between the "feel" of things and may be able to read raised type, which the seeing cannot. This is all due to a training of their attention to note slight differences in sensation, however, and not to improvement in the nervous apparatus. ]
Dread of the Dark.—The discipline suggested with regard to overcoming the dread of heights must be applied to any of these dreads if patients are to be made comfortable. They can form the opposite habit and by refusing to yield to their fears can do much to lessen them. Nearly everyone who is unaccustomed to sleeping in a dark house alone has dreads that come over him when he first tries to do it. Every noise is exaggerated in significance and the creaking of stairs and rattling windows and doors and the wind through the trees are all made significant of something quite other than what they are. Nearly everyone knows, however, that this can be overcome simply by refusing to pay any attention to the idle fears that come over us as a consequence of the tension due to loneliness, and after a time, sleeping in a strange room and a strange house in the dark is not a difficult matter. It is harder for some people to accomplish than others, but it is impossible for none. Here is the lesson that all the sufferers from dreads must learn. Gradually, quietly, persistently, they must resist the dreads that come over them, must deliberately, without excitement, do the opposite to that suggested by their apprehension, until habits are formed that enable them to accomplish without discomfort what was before a source of even serious ill-feeling.
The dread of darkness that so many people have is usually supposed to be cowardice. It is not, however, in most cases, but is due to idiosyncrasy or to certain special physical factors in the environment. If children have been brought up so that when they were small a light has been constantly shining in their eyes, even though only a dim light, it will often be difficult to accustom them to be quite comfortable in the dark. Much depends on habit in this matter. I have known men, who, when they came from Ireland, feared the darkness of the coal mines very much and their dread was increased by the awful horror of possible ghostly appearances, since so many accidents had taken place where they worked. After some years, however, they were quite placid about it and would calmly go into the mine as fire bosses at three and four in the morning, long before others were to go in, examining absolutely dark passages by the mile, with no human being near them and with the creaking of the pillars, the dripping of water, the rumbling of the sides and the occasional fall of a small particle from the roof, besides the noises of rats to add to the disturbing factors. Like going up on a high building, one may get entirely accustomed to it so as scarcely to notice it at all.