CURABILITY AND TREATMENT OF ANIMAL INSANITY. 347 



possible under judicious treatment. The incurability or in- 

 corrigibility of certain ineradicable bad habits, of certain 

 forms of vice or viciousness, of stupidity or temper, in such 

 animals as the horse and dog, if only realised by their mas- 

 ters or custodians, would convince them of the equal futility 

 of severity or kindness, punishment or menace. 



The treatment of animal insanity is to be conducted on 

 the same general principles as that of man, the principles, 

 to wit, of common sense and of kindness. The first most 

 obvious step to be taken is to remove the cause, if discover- 

 able, of the mental disturbance ; and this of itself is fre- 

 quently sufficient to effect a cure, to lead to recovery. For 

 instance, in the case of animals restrained by the nature of 

 their artificial life from the natural gratification of the 

 sexual passion, and in whom melancholia, or other forms of 

 insanity, have directly resulted restoration to freedom of 

 life, to liberty of action, to the society of their species, may 

 at once bring about recovery. There are again various forms 

 of secondary or sympathetic insanity depending, for instance, 

 on the presence of worms in the intestines, or of poisonous 

 and irritant foreign bodies in the stomach, in which cure is 

 brought about by simple emesis or catharsis vomiting or 

 purging artificially produced by drugs. In mad bulls, whose 

 madness is the result of, or consists in, sexual excitement of 

 a kind or degree that renders the animal vicious and un- 

 manageable recovery, usefulness, and safety are procured 

 by means of the operation of castration. 



Sometimes it happens that while the diseased condition 

 which produced the insanity is removed, the mental disorder 

 is left behind as a permanent and serious sequela more 

 serious perhaps than the cause which gave it origin. Such 

 was the case in a horse of Franconi's, mentioned by Pierquin, 

 who also gives an instance in a cat, showing that the 

 mere removal of the cause is not always sufficient to remove 

 also the consequent mental disturbance. 



Where this is the case, when the insanity becomes some- 

 what permanent, various modes of treatment may be had 

 recourse to moral, mental, physical, hygienic, dietetic, 

 surgical, medical, or medicinal. 



