Whether we may consider the vice a disease or not, it becomes a habit engrained in the nature, the nerve centres tending to reproduce their habitual acts indefinitely, so that we may look on the condition as a psychosis which is too often incurable.
Responsibility of the owner. Dangerous aggressive vice is too self-evident to the buyer to constitute a good cause for annulling a sale, but it has this legal bearing, that the owner who keeps an animal known to be vicious, renders himself responsible for whatever injury to man or beast he may perpetrate. Thus the vicious stallion, bull or dog in a public place which damages person or property, renders his owner liable to the extent of such damages. This, of course, must be largely qualified by the attendant circumstances. The man employed to take care of a horse, knows his habits as fully as the owner, takes his chances and should exercise due precautions to avoid danger. The person who enters a stall carelessly without speaking to the horse, seeing that he stands over, or otherwise responds to his call, is himself to blame if he gets kicked. The attendant who does things to a dangerous or questionable horse for mere bravado cannot blame the owner if he gets himself injured. If a person teases a horse so as to tempt him to retaliate, not only is he responsible for his own consequent injuries, but largely also for the habits of the horse and for such injuries as others may subsequently sustain from him.
A dog or a bull shown in a public place, and which breaks loose and injures spectators or others, manifestly renders his master responsible for all such damage.
Treatment of aggressive vice. In mild dispositions in which the vice is roused by temporary suffering, it may often be cured by removal of the cause of such suffering. Indeed, without the healing of sores under the collar or saddle the vice cannot be arrested. Considerate and gentle treatment, too, will go far to restore confidence and to gradually do away with the aggressive disposition.
In wicked stallions castration will usually restore to a good measure of docility. The exceptional cases appear to be those that are hereditarily and constitutionally vicious, or in which the habit has been thoroughly developed and firmly fixed by long practice.
Mares, too, which become vicious and dangerous at each recurrence of œstrum, can usually be completely cured by the removal of the ovaries especially if this is done early in the disease.
The inveterate cases may usually be subdued and rendered controllable for a time by one of the methods of subjugation employed by the professional tamers, but unless they are thereafter kept in good hands they are liable to relapse into the old habit. Among the more effective methods are the Rarey mode of throwing which may be repeated again and again until the animal is thoroughly impressed with a sense of the domination of man and the futility of resistance; the resort of tying the head and tail closely together and letting the animal weary and daze himself by turning in a circle, first to the one side and then to the other; the application of the Comanche bridle made of a small rope, one loop of which is passed through the mouth and back of the ears and drawn tightly, then another loop is made to encircle the lower jaw, and the chin is drawn in against the trachea by passing the free end of the rope round the upper part of the neck and again through the loop encircling the lower jaw and drawing it tight; or a similar small rope is passed a number of times through the mouth and back of the ears and drawn tightly so as to compress the medulla and stupify the animal. This is supposed to be rendered more effective by passing one turn each between the upper lip and gums and between the lower lip and the gums.
CATALEPSY.
Definition. Tetanic and paralytic forms. Balance of flexors and extensors Cataleptoid. No constant lesion. Hysterical. Hypnotic. Subjects: horse, ox, wolf, cat, chicken, Guineapig, snake, frog, crayfish. Causes: strong mental impression, indigestion, etc., in susceptible system. Lesion: inconstant, muscular degeneration, etc. Symptoms: wax-like retention of position given, voluntary movement in abeyance, mental functions impaired, secretions altered. Duration and frequency variable. Treatment: shock; cold; ammonia, pepper, snuff, electricity, amyle nitrite, nitro-glycerine, apomorphine, bromides, purgatives, bitters, iron, zinc, silver, open air exercise.
Definition. This is a functional nervous disorder, characterized by paroxysms of impaired or perverted consciousness, diminished sensibility, and above all a condition of muscular rigidity, by means of which the whole body, or it may be but one or more limbs retain any position in which they may be placed.