PREJUDICES AND ANTIPATHIES. 
135 
were men who dreaded apples more tlian cannon-balls. It 
is also stated that Peter the Great, who contemplated the 
subjugation of the world, would flee from any house on 
beholding a black beetle, and that no persuasion could 
ever after induce him to enter the place again. 
The learned Ariosto would shudder at the sight of a bath ; 
and Jerome Cardan, the great Italian physician and astro- 
loger, would also shiver at the breaking of an egg. 
Orfila relates an instance of a lady, forty-six years of age, 
who could never be present when linseed-tea was preparing, 
without being troubled, in the course of a few minutes, with 
a general swelling of the face, followed by fainting and a loss 
of her intellectual faculties, which condition used to last for 
four-and-twenty hours. Zimmerman also tells us of a lady 
who could not endure the feel of silk or satin, and shuddered 
when she touched the velvety skin of a peach. 
That most learned scholar of the sixteenth century, Eras- 
mus, who came to England by the invitation of Henry VIII., 
always took a fever when he smelt fish j and that daring 
warrior, Julius Csesar, whose towering ambition grasped at 
nothing less than the whole world, would tremble in every 
limb at the crowing of a cock. 
Yoltaire gives the history of an officer who was thrown 
into convulsions, and lost his senses, by having pinks in his 
chamber. 
Orfila gives the account of the painter Yincent, who was 
seized with violent giddiness and swooned when there were 
roses in the room. 
Mary of Medicis and Cardinal Gardona, whenever either 
of them smelt the odour of a rose, would be directly seized 
with a fit of sickness ; and it is said of the poet Lord Byron, 
that he felt the most perfect horror and disgust at seeing 
ladies eat ; and I myself have seen a long, lean, hungry- 
looking fashionable at table, refuse a fine smoking sirloin of 
beef, because (to use his own words) he was not beef-hungry. 
I have also seen a similar-looking customer at a tavern refuse 
a fine rump-steak, because there was neither tomato nor 
oyster sauce with it. On another occasion, I heard a fine 
fellow bid the waiter give a splendid mutton-chop to the 
dog, because there were no pickled walnuts ; and then I saw 
a highly-starched fellow upset the happiness of a merry 
