MEDICAL AND SURGICAL TREATMENT. 385 



applies to man, as to one man's meat being another man's 

 poison, what is poisonous to man or to certain animals may 

 furnish a favourite and harmless food to certain others, as I 

 have elsewhere pointed out. 1 Thus the common goat eats 

 with impunity hemlock, henbane, and digitalis, which are 

 either distasteful or deleterious to other ruminants (Prof. 

 Bell), and are deadly poisons to man. 



Whether or not any intention be involved, whether there 

 is any definite conception of an object, or the means of its 

 attainment, whether cleanliness be adopted as a sanitary pre - 

 caution, it is nevertheless a fact that various animals take 

 better means to secure the healthiness of their persons and 

 dwellings than man, even when highly civilised, generally 

 does. We may point, for instance, to 



1. The careful removal of excrement from nests or lairs 

 by birds and quadrupeds (White) ; or 



2. The ingenious provision sometimes made by other 

 animals for 



a. Ventilation. 



6. Warmth, by exposure to the sun. 



c. Protection from cold, rain, and wind. \A/ 

 The most familiar forms of surgical self-treatm 

 animals are the gnawing off, or otherwise sundering im- 

 prisoned limbs, in order that the rest of the body may escape 

 capture that life itself may escape sacrifice by ruthless man. 

 Thus the rat, caught in a trap, gnaws off its own limb, or it 

 is assisted to do so by some one or more of its fellows (Jesse) . 

 It makes a voluntary and deliberate sacrifice of a limb to life 

 and safety. 



There is another class of surgical operations of a very dif- 

 ferent kind also performed, however, on animals by them- 

 selves : those to wit which are the result of imitation, as in the 

 monkey. They are frequently fatal in consequence of the 

 injudiciousness of the imitation, the inability of the animal 

 properly to execute in duplicate the performances of its 

 master, the misunderstanding by the monkey of the opera- 

 tion itself, its object, or the means of performing it. 



1 Vide Bibliography. 

 VOL. II. C C 



