The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-01-10

them that their dread is groundless, but reason is powerless against in stinct, and an imperious instinct shouts danger" in their ears.
 The opposite malady-claustroph seems to me to reprdouce a state of affairs of much later occuranee in our racial history When arboreal habits at length begin to be abandoned, and our authroporid ancestors begin to shelter themselves in hollow trees, in caves and holes in the ground, there must often have been conflict be- tween the immeasurably old, prima- tive habit of roasting under the open sky and the modern innovation of taking shelter from the weather. The sense of confinement must have been very irksome. We may be sure that there was no sudden revolution in the mode of life. The new habit was adapted very gradually Only in some very violent storm would the first in- dwellers creep into hole for shelter, and they would soon find their circum- scribed quarters intolerable, and brave the elements as soon as the weather began to moderate. Perhaps the new instinct was first implained in the young by the parents bestowing their tender offspring in holes during their own absence or when cold and rain became severe. It is not easy to teach an old dog new tricks; but q
 young wild rabbit or squirrel taken at very early age from the nest, never acquires the untameable wild ness that is so conspicuous a feature in the character of the cold. In any case, the habit of taking shelter in more or less closed spaces was habit of sl3w and gradual acquire ment; and we may be sure that it was not acquired without many a re- lapse and many a backsliding. We can almost hear the jeers and scoffs of the stout old Tory anthropjids at the effeminacy of their degenerate juniors, who should seek a shelter that their forefathers would have scorned. The habit has not yet been fully acquired by all our race, for we see, even at this late day, many per sons of human status to whom the shelter of roof is abhorrent, and who prefer, in the worst of weather to lie. out under a hedgeside rather than submit to the restrain of roof and walls.
 It is to the imperfect acquisition of this later instinct to seeking shelter in confined spaces, or rather it is to the reassertion over it of the more re- mote and earlier instinct of craving for the open sky, and irksomeness of confinement, that the malady of claustrophobia seems to me to be due. In the subject of this malady is re- vlved in its original strtngth that craving for open sky and open air, for possibility or movement in every direction, which were ingrained in our ancestors by their free arboreal lives. and which were overcome with such difficulty when first they descended to lnhabit terra flrma- Like the sufferer from agonraphlba, he who suffers from claustrophobia experiences the revival of an ancestrial instinct that ltaJ beell NUSulSlS lOI ulliOLu -bCliSid- tions but that has been lost more re- gently than that revived In agorapho- bia, Since it existed down to later date since it has been more recently lost it is more easily revived; and this lis the rason, I think, that claustropho- bic is so much less rare than agoyap- lfJbia
 Whatever their origin, the two maladies are equally inveterate. They are refractory to remedies. They arc recalcitrant to treatment. They en- dure foryears and often for lifetime, -B3ndon Lancet