thalassophobia

“I have been endeavoring all the winter to reason away my antipathy to the sea in order to avail myself of a very favorable occasion I now have of passing it—but I have a kind of thalassophobia that resists all kind of argument”

1815, William Short, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 11 March 1815

1937 George M. Gould. Anomalies and curiosities of medicine. Sydenham Publishers, New York Thalassophobia is the fear of the view of immense spaces or uninterrupted expanses. The Emperor Heraclius, at the age of fifty-nine, had an insurmountable fear of the view of the sea; and it is said that when he crossed the Bosphorus a bridge of boats was formed, garnished on both sides with plants and trees, obscuring all view of the water over which the Emperor peacefully traversed on horseback. The moralist Nicole, was equally a thalassophobe, and always had to close his eyes at the sight of a large sheet of water, when he was seized with trembling in all his limbs. Occasionally some accident in youth has led to an aversion to traversing large sheets of water, and there have been instances in which persons who have fallen into the water in childhood have all their lives had a terror of crossing bridges.

(Editor’s note: Those who suffer from claustrophobia, kabourophobia, arachnophobia or thalassophobia are advised to skip the above trailer.)

2024 August 11, Andrew Torgan, Daniel Wine, “Start your week smart: Gymnast stripped of medal, Brazil plane crash, Trump campaign hack, fighting inside Russia”, in CNN, archived from the original on 17 Aug 2024