Snakephobia

His mother “never could abide” the serpent; its Freischutzian tones were unearthly in the old lady’s ears, and seemed to fret her bowels into fiddle strings, and positively turn her inside out, as the old lady declared just before her death, which occurrence was doubtless hastened by the violence of her snakephobia.

Death from Snakephobia.—The Tampa Peninsular (Fla.) of the 19th ult. says that Mrs. Sealy, of that vicinity, died under the following extraordinary circumstances:—About two weeks previous to her death, a small garter snake made its way through the floor of the residence and wrapped itself around the ankle of the unfortune woman, who was frightened into spasms.

One may say that snakephobia is common to all human beings, and Charles Darwin has described most impressively how he was unable to control his fear of a snake pointing for him, though he knew he was separated from it by a thick pane of glass.

Women are traditionally hysterical in the presence of members of the reptile kingdom. To reconcile Eve to the snake—that was the problem. In vain did the promoters of the new fad invoke plausible arguments. From one stage door to another went the emissaries of the reptile hide plungers, imploring the help of one after the other of the Paris footlight beauties. Everywhere they met with the same unreasonable snakephobia, distinguishing characteristic of femininity.

One person may have snakephobia, another ratphobia ,and still another may have ghostphobia. In fact, it is possible to develop a phobia about almost any thing.

He had evidently heard my name called out when I was given my “money declaration,” for he said, ‘You Irish do not like snakes.’ I agreed with him and told him that St. Patrick had driven the snakes from Ireland and I wished he had chased them out of a few other countries. “Upon that I asked him to join me in a little anti-snake poison. At the station estaminet (bar) we had a few brandies and completely forgot the snakephobia.”

If the shocker had even one ounce of Irish blood in his heat-withered veins, he was doubly wretched over the never-ending possibilities of grabbing a snake at the same time he seized a bundle of grain. The ounce of Irish snakephobia showed up at times in those who spoke with a Teutonic accent, like the middle-aged shocker, who enthusiastically shovel-passed a bundle and explained the record heave thus: “It used to make mine heart go pitty-pat to hug the girls—but,” exploding a couple of words beginning with Y and C, “to hug a tamn snake! ! ! ! ”

Unfortunately, say Millerton rangers, many harmless snakes suffer death because people can not recognize one snake from another or because of “snakephobia,” which case any snake is only a good snake when it’s a dead snake.