268 
March 7th .— Discharged fit for duty. I attribute the cure to 
the effects of the cautery, as it very soon made the horse a fit 
and proper subject for a species of military duty which is some¬ 
times particularly laborious. 
ON INSANITY IN THE DOMESTICATED 
QUADRUPED. 
Bi/ P ROFESSOR RoDET, of ToitloUSC. 
In the Dictionary of Medical Science,” in which there is 
much that is interesting to the veterinarian, the editor, under the 
title ^‘insanity” (folic), has neglected to call the attention of 
naturalists to the derangements which seem to take place in the 
faculties, truly intellectual, which domesticated quadrupeds evi¬ 
dently possess. In truth, however, the veterinary surgeon has 
not collected a sufficient number of well-authenticated facts ab¬ 
solutely to prove that insanity does exist in the animals which 
we have subjected to our sway; but, since these animals are en¬ 
dowed with certain faculties or inclinations superior to instinct, 
such as volition, memory, attachment, hate, resentment, fear, &c., 
which indubitably prove that they possess the power of compar¬ 
ing their ideas, and, consequently, a certain degree of intelli¬ 
gence, it will necessarily follow, from the very possession of 
these faculties, that they may be deranged or destroyed by a 
multitude of causes which it is unnecessary to state here ; in fact, 
that insanity in some of its varieties may and must exist as a 
consequence of their complicated organization, and the circum¬ 
stances in which they are placed. 
The brain, the organ essential to the intellectual faculties, is, 
with few differences, the same in the domestic animal as in man. 
In him the lesion of a certain part of the brain often draws 
after it the derangement, or disturbance, or perversion of a cer¬ 
tain faculty ; and it is well known that the same lesions, whether 
mechanical or organic, are to be met with in the inferior animals. 
These identical lesions—ought they not, in an analogous organi¬ 
zation, to produce nearly similar results? especially since com¬ 
parative anatomy proves to us that, among all the beings endowed 
with life, wherever we find an organ w'ell developed, we find also 
the faculty of which it is the base and instrument; and we find 
the particular disease of which it alone can be the seat, and of 
which the lesion of this organ can become the special, and, more 
or less, inevitable cause. May it not hence be concluded, that 
in animals, in which essential lesions of the brain arc observed, 
