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- “Textbooks today still make silly statements that schizophrenia has always been around, it’s about the same incidence all over the world, and it’s existed since time immemorial,” he says. “The epidemiology literature contradicts that completely.” In fact, he says, schizophrenia did not rise in prevalence until the latter half of the 18th century, when for the first time people in Paris and London started keeping cats as pets. The so-called cat craze began among “poets and left-wing avant-garde Greenwich Village types,” says Torrey, but the trend spread rapidly—and coinciding with that development, the incidence of schizophrenia soared.
Few people agree with me, but I think cats are a bizarre choice of pet. They defecate, scratch in their litter box, then jump up on your counter top or onto your pillow.
If they weren't socially accepted as pets, I don't think there would be much tolerance for this. Imagine instead of a cat, it was an possum that pooped in its litter box, then hopped up on your counter.
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One could make a similar argument about cleanliness with any pet (or even a child; remember, at least the cat isn't shitting on you). Its not the point. Pets are not for rationalism. They fulfill something else entirely. If we were being rational we would all live in small rectangular apartments that are painted the same color. We're not rational, and we're all the better for it.
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thenewgreen · 4452 days ago · link ·
I couldn't agree more. Such a bizarre pet to have. Like I'm actually allergic to cats. So is my wife, so we've got that going for us. But why would you want an animal that poops in your house and then treads all over your home? What is also strange are the people that put down those "puppy pads" and allow their dogs to poop/pee in the house on pads. -So weird.
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thenewgreen · 4452 days ago · link ·
that kind makes me sneeze too :) Like others in the thread, I b allergic
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thenewgreen · 4427 days ago · link ·
- Written documents that identify Schizophrenia can be traced to the old Pharaonic Egypt, as far back as the second millennium before Christ. Depression, dementia, as well as thought disturbances that are typical in schizophrenia are described in detail in the Book of Hearts. The Heart and the mind seem to have been synonymous in ancient Egypt. The physical illnesses were regarded as symptoms of the heart and the uterus and originating from the blood vessels or from purulence, fecal matter, a poison or demons
From The History of Schizophrenia link: http://www.schizophrenia.com/history.htm
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JakobVirgil · 4427 days ago · link ·
no but the Aztecs and Incas did not have cats no Felis catus in pre-columbian America.
Dogs on the other hand are nearly ubiquitous with human settlement.
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thenewgreen · 4427 days ago · link ·
Is this because the cats were able to ward of mice, rats etc?
thenewgreen · 4452 days ago · link ·
What an awesome piece.
T. gondii, reports Sapolsky, can turn a rat’s strong innate aversion to cats into an attraction, luring it into the jaws of its No. 1 predator. Even more amazing is how it does this: the organism rewires circuits in parts of the brain that deal with such primal emotions as fear, anxiety, and sexual arousal. I wonder if a similar parasite is at work here as the "wasp virus": http://hubski.com/pub?id=5516