AETIFICIAL INSANITY. 75 



are said to produce effects similar to those of the vegetable 

 ones (Chieraggi). 



Mechanical injuries such as blows on the head are apt to 

 produce the same kind of mental results as in man. And it 

 need not be pointed out that the lower, and especially the 

 domestic, animals such as those like the horse, dog, ox, or 

 sheep, which are the slaves of man, or minister to his daily 

 wants, are much more liable to such injuries too frequently 

 wantonly inflicted than is man himself. Traumatic in- 

 sanity in them mental disorder arising from various kinds 

 of injury or wounds, most of them directly attributable to 

 man's cruelty is probably much more common than is 

 generally supposed. It is apparently rare simply because it 

 is not carefully looked for. 



As has been explained in another chapter, man's practice, 

 in such cases, is not to study the diseases mental or phy- 

 sical which he has himself created, but to thrust the 

 animals affected with them as speedily and completely as 

 possible beyond his view and ken, by the aid of his gun, 

 bludgeon, the butcher's knife, or poison. 



Traumatic insanity in the lower animals is sometimes 

 described also, as ' accidental/ in the sense that it results 

 from injury, or wound, produced by accident, not by delibe- 

 ration or intention on man's part. It is not the less, 

 however both artificial and preventible the fruit of man's 

 ignorance, if not of his wantonness, at least in the majority 

 of cases. 



Unfortunately much of man's bad usage is apt to be 

 directed to the head of his animal victim. The dog and 

 other animals are often stunned by blows on the head at the 

 hands of man ; and these blows lead occasionally to dementia, 

 preceded by anorexia, by loss of usual love for the chase, and 

 of keenness of scent, and by a series of symptoms that consti- 

 tute a gradual or sudden change in the animal's character 

 (Pierquin). 



As in man, the effects of injuries or accidents may long 

 remain latent, and then appear suddenly and seriously. 



Many animals domestic and wild are enraged by the 

 wounds mostly from firearms, but also from whips, sticks, 



