On the causes of death of many of the animals at the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park, from 1851 to February 1860 / by Edwards Crisp.

  • Crisp, Edwards, 1806-1882.
Date:
[1860]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the causes of death of many of the animals at the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park, from 1851 to February 1860 / by Edwards Crisp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    animal, the whole being stiulded with tubercles in various stages of development. The wonder is that life could have been prolonged under such a vast accumulation of disease. The presence of aneurism in a monkey has not, as far as I know, been before observed, and, although I have been especially careful to examine the larger arteries in most of the animals I have dissected, I have only in one instance—an old Capybara (Hi/drochcerics)—met with ossified deposit,—an alteration so common in the human subject. Chiroptera.—Three Pteropi (Fruit-eating Bats) are the only members of this order that I have inspected, and, with the exception of evidence of want of nutrition, no sufficient cause of death could be discovered. Carnivora.—The animals of this order examined amount to more than one hundred, and their diseases differ in many respects from the preceding. Tubercles of the lungs are much less frequent, but their occurrence in the liver and spleen is not uncommon. Although it is said that a cat has nine lives, many of the Felidce are readily killed by a slight amount of inflammation of the lungs. In several deaths I have found the first stage of pneumonia suflicient to produce the fatal result. Among the Carnivora, I have examined six lions (including two cubs), four tigers, two jaguars, and four leopards. One lion had a false aneurism of the lung ; a lioness died in convulsive fits; I found a large quantity of hay in the stomach, but could discover no lesion of the brain or other organ to account for death. I may here mention that I have met with several cases of fatal obstruction of the bowels in carnivorous auimals from this cause : large accumu- lations of hay and straw are matted together in the intestines, ren- dering them impervious. The most extraordinary example, however, that has come to my notice occurred in a common cat at Barclay's Brewery, and in this instance, as the case is a very practical one, I think I may depart from the plan I had laid down of confining my notices to deaths in the Society's collection. The cat in question had been for a long time confined in one of the corn-chambers, and was unable to procure grass; she gradually became emaciated and died nearly a skeleton ; after death the stomach was found filled with a solid mass, formed of the twigs of birch-brooms. Mr. Braby, the intelligent veterinary surgeon of the estabhshment, gave me a half-section of this mass; it is now in the Museum of the College