FORMS OF MENTAL DEFECT AND DERANGEMENT. 49 



unprovoked fury as was exhibited by this animal. He ap- 

 peared to be raving mad. His body was a mass of frightful 

 scars, the result of continual conflicts with bulls of his own 



species He was evidently a character of the worst 



description, but whose madness rendered him callous to all 

 punishment.' 



Similar cases of chronic mania, or perhaps, rather, of what 

 is more properly merely recurrent, or periodic mania, are even 

 more familiar in rogue elephants on the rampage in India 

 than in the great river horse of the Nile and its tributaries. 

 In our own country the most usual instances of ephemeral 

 mania, and of the dangers to man which characterise it, are 

 cases of infuriated cattle, while being driven through the 

 streets of large towns to market, running a-muck, a pro- 

 cedure strictly analogous to that which is so well known 

 among the Malays. The newspapers teem with accounts of 

 such cases in consequence of the disasters or panics which 

 they produce, the truthfulness of the main facts being gene- 

 rally capable of easy substantiation. 



A case of acute mania in a young short-horn bull at Ellon 

 (Aberdeen shire) is thus described in the newspapers. First 

 it became ' rather wild,' broke from its keeper and tossed a 

 man, ' against whom it rushed with full force.' Then 'the 

 infuriated bull got wilder .... and rushed madly against 

 a stone dyke, breaking off one of its horns close by the head. 

 The blood from the root of the broken horn squirted on to 

 the dyke. On seeing it the animal got more furious than ever 

 and rushed again and again at the blood-marks, literally 

 smashing its head and almost killing itself.' * As usual in 

 such cases, it was summarily despatched by the nearest 

 butcher. 



In all kinds and degrees of mania there is a tendency to 

 continuous or intermittent fury or destructiveness, directed 

 indiscriminately against all objects, persons, or other 

 animals with which the affected animal may come in contact, 

 or which it may see or hear. A murderous impulse is fre- 

 quently exhibited, in which case the mental disease may be 

 described as amounting to, or constituting, a murderous mania, 



1 ' Edinburgh Couranty March 24, 1876. 

 VOL. II. E 



