CURABILITY AND TREATMENT OF ANIMAL INSANITY. 353 



byres, or menageries, the feeling of captive helplessness, 

 superadded to the terror of the stalled or tethered horses or 

 cattle, or of the caged animals, and to the physical influence 

 of the heat or glare, very literally ' madden' the poor brutes, 

 while by setting them free, sending them away from the 

 causes which gave it birth, panic would gradually subside. 



Music, as a remedial means, is not utilised, at least to 

 the extent of which it is capable, whether in the treatment 

 of the various forms of insanity, of the various degrees of 

 excitement, irritability, anger, fury, or of depression, grief, 

 despondency, despair ; and there can be no doubt of both its 

 calmative and stimulant effects under different circum- 

 stances. Any kind, or all kinds of music may act as a 

 calmative, soothing the ' savage breast ' of other animals, as 

 they do that of man ; or certain musical notes, or sorts 

 thereof, may bring about a perfect calm, as certainly as others 

 do a dangerous fury. 



The soothing effect may be immediate, and extraordi- 

 nary ; more usually it is gradual, though decided. The 

 effects of music as a modus medendi in other animals are 

 analogous to those that result from its use in man. In 

 our domestic sick rooms, in our hospitals, both for insane 

 and sane, music is constantly being rendered useful in in- 

 ducing sleep, calming excitement, developing pleasurable 

 feelings. For upwards of twenty years, I have myself had 

 occasion to employ ifc largely, in various forms, as a medicine 

 partly psychical, partly physical including public, and 

 domestic or chamber, practice, in concerts, balls, classes for 

 vocal music, rehearsals, or otherwise in the moral treatment 

 of the inmates of the Murray Eoyal Institution, a hospital 

 for the insane of the higher classes, near Perth ; and my ex- 

 perience there led me, many years ago, to recommend its 

 similar adoption in general hospitals for the sane, and 

 especially in their convalescent departments. 



As a soothing agent music frequently becomes in man's 

 hands a means of bringing about submissiveness and inno- 

 cuity in obstreperous animals (Pierquin) ; or it enables him 

 to capture them for his various purposes. As a stimulant, it 

 cheers and encourages to work and to perseverance therein. 



VOL. II. A A 



