PRODUCED BY MENTAL CAUSES. 263 



degree from fatal epilepsy or convulsions to mere scarcely 

 perceptible muscular tremor or quivering, and they include 

 paralysis or loss of motive power. 



Epilepsy occurs both, directly and indirectly from fright : 

 directly in the parrot, where fright is habitual from the 

 practice of throwing things at its cage to prevent its scream- 

 ing (Buist) ; indirectly in the dog pup, from milk poisoned 

 by rage in the mother. In certain cases, where the affection 

 itself, or the tendency thereto, was not produced by mental 

 causes, the fits are, nevertheless, determined by mental ex- 

 citement as in a fatal traumatic case in a dog, in which 

 the disease was produced by a blow on the head (Wood). 

 Elaine mentions among its causes in the dog for it results 

 from many causes, bodily or mixed, as well as mental 

 passion or anger, fear and irritability. The latter, however, 

 is quite as likely to be an effect as a cause, considering the 

 frequency with which epilepsy, however arising, produces 

 mental disturbance or temper- change of various degrees. 



Convulsions, non-epileptic in their character, are some- 

 times quite as serious as epilepsy itself; while there is every 

 probability that simple and epileptic convulsions are com- 

 monly confounded with, and mistaken for, each other. Nor 

 is the eiTor of much practical importance, because the causes, 

 results, and treatment are, or ought to be, the same. Buffon 

 mentions an instance of convulsions in a bullfinch from fear 

 and an unpleasant association of ideas at the mere sight 

 of some beggars. Blaine speaks of convulsions in the dog 

 from joy, on the one hand, and from the angry words of a 

 master on the other. Convulsions have been caused, too, in 

 the dog by mere reproof from a master (' Animal World '). 

 Bosquillon gives a case of convulsions in a dog placed on a 

 lion's skin ; but though morbid or vivid imagination, giving 

 rise to fear, was here probably involved, there may have co- 

 existed physical as well as mental causes for instance, 

 strong olfactory impressions. Convulsive startings occur in 

 the dog and other animals, both during sleep and in the 

 waking state, probably connected, in certain cases at least, 

 with morbid imagination. 



A minor form or milder degree of motor muscular and 



