Abstract:This essay explores how phobia emerged as a familiar medical diagnostic in the United States and Atlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Before phobia developed into a variable suffix that could attach to different objects and ideas, its meaning took shape in literature on rabies. Until the late 1800s, the common name for rabies among English speakers was hydrophobia. Transliterated from the Greek, the term was used to designate a dread of liquids, prompted by difficulties in swallowing—a symptom doctors considered the most familiar form the disease took. By the late eighteenth century a diagnostic twist had taken effect: many physicians agreed that one could acquire hydrophobia without being bitten. Doctors called this subspecies "spontaneous hydrophobia." This article argues that phobia's variability as a concept grew in dialogue with case studies documenting the phenomenon of spontaneous rabies.

中文翻译：

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恐水症的分身：迈向美国早期狂犬病叙事中的情感文学史

摘要：本文探讨了恐惧症如何在 18 世纪和 19 世纪成为美国和大西洋世界熟悉的医学诊断方法。在恐惧症发展成为可以附加到不同物体和想法的可变后缀之前，它的含义在关于狂犬病的文献中已经形成。直到 1800 年代后期，讲英语的人对狂犬病的通用名称是恐水症。这个词从希腊语音译而来，用来表示由于吞咽困难而导致的对液体的恐惧——医生认为这是该病最熟悉的一种症状。到 18 世纪后期，一种诊断方法已经生效：许多医生一致认为，人们可以在不被咬伤的情况下患上恐水症。医生称这个亚种为“自发性恐水症”。这篇文章认为恐惧症'