DIFFERENCE AND DISORDER. 189 



c. Paralysis of thought and action, tending to dangerous, 

 perhaps fatal, inaction. 



Thunder occasionally causes panic in menagerie animals, 

 the particular form in which fear shows itself differing in 

 species and genera so different as the tiger, elephant, camel, 

 and horse. Obstacles to the gratification of the sexual pas- 

 sion produce in some animals active excitement in the form 

 of fury, or of mania of the kind described in another chapter 

 as erotomania ; and in others a melancholic passivity, leading 

 to death by pining and marasmus, by self-starvation and 

 inanition. Again, the tumult of war produced in the street 

 dogs of Paris in 1871 a series of effects described by Gautier. 

 These effects included uneasiness, excitement ; the animals 

 were easily scared, and betook themselves to flight in abject 

 terror. But here many causes acted in combination such 

 as unusual noises and sights ; the loss of masters, of homes, 

 and of food ; exposure to weather, and the casualties of a 

 siege. On the other hand, the greater tumult of the battle- 

 field has no effect or, at least, no deterrent effect on the 

 disciplined charger, or even on the officer's dog that goes 

 deliberately in search of its master through shot and shell, 

 flame and powder- smoke. 



Per contra, the most dissimilar causes frequently produce 

 the same results for instance, the same forms of insanity. 



The same causes that produce mental, lead also to bodily, 

 disorder. They give rise equally to motor and mental 

 phenomena, to physical and mental disease especially to 

 other diseases of the nervous system than insanity includ- 

 ing, for instance, rabies, chorea, convulsions, paralysis, and 

 delirium, the form of the resultant disorder, both bodily and 

 mental, sometimes being determined by the age of the animal. 



The fact that the same causes that lead to insanity in 

 the lower animals lead equally to, or are apt to do so, in part 

 at least, to rabies, has a special importance in reference to a 

 disease which inspires a greater intensity of popular terror 

 or horror, with a greater amount of popular error, than 

 perhaps any other single disease to which either the human 

 or animal body is subject. Though the proofs hitherto 

 adduced are perhaps insufficient to determine the point, it is 



