76 AETIFICIAL INSANITY. 



or spurs inflicted by man. It is not at all probable that 

 this furiosity arises simply from the pain they suffer. In 

 * many cases, at least, the animals have been previously 

 persecuted, hunted and harassed by man: they are con- 

 sequently jaded, and are in a condition of double irritation 

 mental and bodily. 



Wounds produced in animals by each other lead to the 

 same sort of results as those inflicted by man. Thus we 

 are told of cases of collie dogs, wounded by a stag's horns, 

 being stupid ever after, losing all their former courage, this 

 mental condition being associated with epilepsy and with 

 paralysis of the wounded limbs (Stewart). 



The use by man of instruments or appliances that pre- 

 vent freedom of action or vision, of respiration or the 

 gratification of the natural desires, or propensities, that 

 restrain exercise, or prevent food supply, is another direct 

 provocative of mental annoyance or excitement, more or 

 less intense. For instance, the muzzling of the dog in hot 

 weather is apt to produce the very evils, or conditions, it is 

 avowedly intended to prevent or guard against. Ferocity, 

 mania, rabies itself are not uncommon or unnatural results 

 (Pierquin). Its use is quite comparable with that of the 

 strait-waistcoat or jacket in man, which, though preventive 

 of danger to himself or others in the sufferer from mania, 

 delirium tremens, or the delirium of fever, would by its 

 limitation of freedom of action drive most sane men frantic. 

 The blinkers of the horse furnish another illustration of an 

 instrument which is not only useless, but dangerously mis- 

 chievous. 



Passion is easily produced, or provoked experimentally 

 in monkeys, by man (Darwin), and it may be made to exhibit 

 all its degrees, between mere 'temper' and mania. But 

 man's usual object in the artificial excitation of anger is the 

 capture of the enraged animal. Thus he catches the Taran- 

 tula spider, of Nicaragua, by lowering into its hole a string 

 with a ball of soft wax at its end, 'jerking it up and down 

 until the spider gets exasperated so far as to bury its for- 

 midable jaws in the wax, whereby it can be drawn to the 

 surface' (Belt). The trap-door spiders of New Zealand 



