Claustrophobia is a somewhat mysterious disorder. It first appears in the annals of medicine in the 1870s, when a French physician working in Paris wrote of two people who reported feelings of anxiety when inside their apartments with their doors closed.
At the time, Paris was rapidly urbanizing, with the city becoming more crowded with people and with conditions becoming more cramped. Soon after the Paris cases were documented, a similar case developed involving a man in New York, just as that city was growing more urbanized.
Some theorists postulate that the development of claustrophobia was caused by the rise of the modern city. This makes sense; after all, did the fear of flying exist before airplanes were invented?
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