ANIMAL " MATERIA MEDICA."
THE legend that the young 2Esculapius cured a man by the use of a herb which he had seen a sick goat search for and eat upon the slopes of Pelion, is evidence of the antiquity of the belief that animals are acquainted with the use of medicinal plants. The belief did not lose in force in later days ; and in the " bestiaries " and medical works of the Middle Ages, the medical knowledge possessed by animals was almost as much exaggerated as were the healing virtues of various parts of the animals themselves. Bat enough is now known of the nature of animal vateria medica to excite interest and curiosity without the aid of fable. There is abundant evidence that very many species know and constantly make use of simple remedies for definite disorders, and at the same time observe rules of health to which only the highest civilisation or the sanction of religions prescrip- tion compels man to conform. It has been noted that the general condition of animal health, especially in the case of the herbivorous creatures, corresponds not inexactly with that of such tribes as the Somalis, men feeding almost solely on grain, milk, dates, and water, living constantly in the open air, moderate in all things, and cleanly, because their religion enjoins constant ablutions. Like them, wild animals have no induced diseases; the greater number do not eat to excess ; they take regular exercise in seeking their food, and drink only at fixed hours. Many of them secure change of climate, one of the greatest factors in health, by migration. This is not confined to birds and beasts, for the salmon enters the soft water partly to get rid of sea- parasites, and returns to the sea to recruit after spawning. With change of climate, change of diet, and perfectly healthy habits, their list of disorders is short, though they readily fall victims to contagious disease, just as recently numbers of the Hamran Arabs of the Soudan, as healthy livers and good Museulmans as the Somalis themselves, friends and fellow-hunters with Sir Samuel Baker, perished of con. tagions fever on the banks of the Nile tributaries.
The medical precautions of animals are thus mainly directed to the preservation of the health which they normally enjoy, which is partly obtained by the conscious search for a change of food and locality. Cleanliness is their next object of solicitude, and in this the various forms of animal toilet play an important part. It is almost more necessary that the out- side of an animal, whether skin or scales, should be free from disease, than that the interior functions should be in per- fect order. Nature seems to cure the latter, but not the former. On the contrary, animals when wild constantly die a lingering death from injury to the skin, whether caused, as usually happens in tropical countries, by wounds aggravated by insects, or by cutaneous disease. Hence the pains which they take in making their toilet, and in the use and selection of "cosmetics." Among birds, the salt-water species often seek fresh water to wash in, different land-birds choose different earths in which to dust, and also wash in water, and nearly every tropical animal, including the tiger, bathes either in water or in mud. Perhaps the best-known mud- bathers are the wild-boar, the water-buffalo, and the elephant. The latter has an immense advantage over all other animals, in the use of its trunk for dressing wounds. It is at once a syringe, a powdering-puff, and a hand. Water, mud, and dust are the main " applications " used, though it sometimes covers a sun-scorched back with grass or leaves. "Wounded elephants," writes Sir Samuel Baker, "have a marvellous power of recovery when in their wild state, although they have no gifts of surgical knowledge, their simple system being confined to plastering their wounds with mud, or blowing dust upon the surface. Dust and mud comprise the entire pharmacorceia of the elephant, and this is applied upon the most trivial, as well as upon the most serious, occa-
sions I have seen them when in a tank plaster up a bullet-wound with mud taken from the bottom."
In Europe the pig is credited with the discovery of the use of the mud-bath, and of the healing virtue of the waters of Bath itself, unless the story of the cleansing of Prince Bladud, by the use of the water which cured the skins of his swine, is a baseless fable. There is indirect evidence of the success of the different forms of treatment used by animals to keep their skins in health, in the disaster which sometimes overtakes those which neglect them. In the last few years great numbers of foxes, from South Berkshire to the Badminton country, have died of virulent mange. The disease was said to have been introduced by some foreign foxes which were turned down near Aldershot. The earths became tainted, and the infected foxes seemed quite unable to shake off the disease, or to discover any natural remedy to cure it. Birds, such as
rooks and ducks, which live in companies, soon stamp out sporadic disease, by killing the sufferers ; but in great epidemics, such as the grouse disease, or the plague which destroyed the reindeer of Northern Russia, birds and animals alike seem helpless, and die passively. An excep- tion must be made in the case of those grouse on the moors near the sea. These birds, in many cases, moved down to the coast, and ate the salt crystals left among the rocks.
The maintenance of a good digestion holds the next place to a healthy skin, in the animal practice of medicine. To this end they do seek and use what might be termed `. drugs," or sub- stances which are their equivalent. As each creature is its own doctor, and has to judge of its symptoms by the light of Nature, the uniformity of " practice " in their use of medi- cines is not a little curious. Salt is the remedy most generally used by all the larger herbivorous animals. Both in America and India, certain places are resorted to by
animals, often coming from a great distance, to eat the salt- impregnated earth, or to lick saline exudations from the rocks.
In North America this habit is so well known, that hunters wait at the " salt-licks " to shout the deer which come to them at night. A tea-planter in Assam was recently watching at night under a salt-yielding hill-side with the same object when he was himself attacked,—an elephant with a young one came on to the bank above, and smelling an enemy below, picked up large stones and threw them over, thinking, as a native gun-bearer remarked, that a tiger was hidden below, Red-deer will also go down to the shore and eat the seaweed, and even devour the bones and horns of dead deer for the sake of the salt and lime in them, while all cattle and sheep will eagerly eat rock-salt, when placed in low, wet pastures. Many birds, especially pigeons, are salt-eaters, though the carnivorous birds, like the carnivorous animals, do not seem to need it. Pheasants, which, like turkeys, have a delicate digestion, especially when young, require hot and pungent food in addition to their usual fare. It has been noticed that when wild they scratch up and eat the roots of the wild arum, which are so hot that they will blister the tongue, and in the Cau- casus they eat the colchicum root. Pheasant-breeders have taken the hint from this, and mix hot spices with their pheasant- meal, just as turkey - rearers give their poults peppercorns. It has been noticed also that birds, and some animals, require drugs far stronger and in larger quantities than are needed to produce an effect on men.
The carnivorous animals avoid Bait, and take an emetic instead. This at least seems to be the object with which dogs eat the harsh and sword-like blades of spear-grass," Bat they also eat other grass merely as medicine. Cats also eat grass, and not always as an emetic. There is a wide- leaved kind which grows in some gardens, though not in others, which is known as "cat-grass." Cats will come to eat it from a distance, and some will take it from the hand if it is plucked and brought to them. This medicinal use of grass seems common to most of the larger cats. At the Zoo, when the grass is cut in the spring, a few handfuls are generally given to the lions and leopards, which eat it just as a dog does.
A third panacea for indigestion among birds, and used also by the larger lizards, is the swallowing of stones of all sizes, from a pound-weight in the case of the crocodile, to the tiny grit and gravel in the gizzards of birds. This can only be done for purely medical reasons, for not even a crocodile would swallow stones, as famishing negroes do earth, "to deceive the stomach." Breeders of prize poultry have recently been engaged in one of those controversi( s which range with such unbridled warmth among the "fancy," as to whether " grit " is necessary for the well- being of fowls, and if so, what grit, and whether it should be patent grit or common mortar and gravel. Judging from the
habits of fowls and pigeons other than those bred for show, there can be no doubt that they naturally eat gravel and grit as medicine, the pigeons taking it more freely at the time when the eggs are about to be laid. It has been noticed also that dogs, when always fed from platters, and not given food upon the ground, will eat ashes, apparently to supply the want of this natural digestive. This knowledge of remedies available for animal use is as difficult to explain as the instinct by which they avoid poisonous plants, for even domestic cattle refrain from eating the leaves of the yew tree, if they are kept in districts where the tree is commonly found.
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