350 CUKABILITY AND TEEATMENT OF ANIMAL INSANITY. 



or poison. In every respect such rash treatment is erro- 

 neous : for a little patience, a little trouble, a little common 

 sense or reflection, a little sympathy or humanity, would 

 serve to convince the owners or custodians of valuable 

 animals, such as horses and cattle, that what appears to 

 be the most dangerous and most hopeless of all forms of 

 animal disorder or disease the dreaded ' madness ' is really 

 one of the most curable, hopeful, and innocuous under proper 

 management, be it always understood. 



Pierquin points out the wholesale poisoning of dogs that 

 in his day took place in Prussia and France, not only of ani- 

 mals under suspicion of rabies, but simply as a preventive 

 measure, to forestall the possible future development of the 

 dreaded disease. These slaughtered innocents were the vic- 

 tims of popular alarm and ignorance, of a mere possibility, 

 of a contingency that might never happen. Watson, on the 

 other hand, calls attention to the summary shooting of horses 

 for ferocity of temper and all sorts of vices, real, alleged, or 

 supposed. 



Such a summary disposal of suspected or affected animals 

 is attended with many serious disadvantages, including the 

 following : 



1. No opportunity is allowed for recovery; the result of 

 which is the loss of large numbers of valuable animals, 

 especially horses, cattle, and dogs. 



2. No opportunity is afforded, subsequent to its origin 

 or development, for the study of animal insanity, and the 

 diseases with which it is apt to be confounded. The re- 

 sult of this is gross ignorance of the natural history of the 

 diseases in question; which ignorance again produces the 

 serious errors in treatment that have already been adverted to. 



There is much need of a rational treatment, not of insanity 

 only, but of many conditions of the senses or of the mind, of 

 the temper, propensities, passions, or appetites, that consti- 

 tute technically, among veterinarians, 'vices' such as blind- 

 ness, nervousness, shying, timidity, alarm, stupidity, biting. 



During the reign of human and animal demonology, the 

 cruel treatment resulting from unjust suspicion and mis- 

 chievous superstition on the part of man was directly 



