42 INSANITY IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 



for instance, simple imbecility in all its degrees is incapacity 

 for work. While this may arise from deficient or disordered 

 intelligence, it is also produced by ignorance or carelessness, 

 indifference or dissimulation, laziness or refusal. But some 

 of these conditions are themselves frequently the results of 

 mental derangement. Certain animals make practical, often 

 dangerous, protests against all kinds of work, or against some 

 kinds only, or against overwork. Work may be congenial 

 or not, just as in man ; and animals, even when thoroughly 

 domesticated and habituated to labour, have their likings 

 and dislikes for particular kinds of work. While as a rule 

 trained animals work without difficulty, some labour with 

 great willingness, heartiness, or zeal, showing an obvious in- 

 terest in work. But inability for, or refusal to, work is only 

 one of the many serious results to man from animal insanity, 

 results that include also heavy pecuniary losses 



1. In animal property ; for instance, in the case of Kane's 

 Arctic dogs, and of Arctic dogs in general, when employed in 

 the service of exploring expeditions. 



2. In damage to other kinds of property, fixed or movable, 

 such as crops, dwellings, fences, stable fittings ; and last, but 

 certainly not least, 



3. Danger to, and loss of, human life. 



There may or may not be demonstrable necroscopic condi- 

 tions concomitant with insanity in the lower animals that may 

 be regarded as standing in the relation of cause and effect. 

 The microscope or the naked eye may reveal or be supposed 

 to do so in the brain or spinal cord the presence of inflam- 

 mations, or their products or results. But it has not yet been 

 shown conclusively in human insanity that there is any necro- 

 scopic appearance, condition, or lesion that is peculiar to 

 the insane, and that might, therefore, be regarded as diag- 

 nostic of the presence of insanity, or of any particular form 

 thereof. 



It is, again, one of the common errors, even of skilled 

 physicians, to regard human insanity as always and neces- 

 sarily a disease of debility, the truth being that, while it is 

 frequently so, it is also associated with perfect apparent 

 vigour of constitution both in other animals and in man. 



