Note 29 — CHAP. VI.

We find, in the memoirs of count Strahlemberg, a Swedish officer, who was taken prisoner at the battle of Pultowa, and continued many years at the court of czar Peter, the following account of the true cause of this extraordinary kind of hydrophobia. When Peter was about five years of age, his mother took him with her in a coach for an airing, and having to pass a dam, where there was a great fall of water the child, who was then sleeping in his nurse's lap, was so terrified by the rushing of the water (the noise of which waked him suddenly out of his sleep), that he was seized with a violent fever, and, after his recovery, he retained such a dread of that element, that he could not bear the sight even of any standing water, much less to hear a running stream.