In 1966, neurosurgeon Jules Hardy was called to the bedside of a somewhat special patient, the lion Cato from the Garden of Wonders in Montreal.
With his team, Jules Hardy will examine and treat the two-year-old lion “born to an African mother and a South American father” who “is a television star well known to children”.
The lion cub from the Garden of Wonders was born in captivity and the zoo director, Désiré Aerts, was moving him in his Volkswagen. Source: Radio-Canada Archives Radio-Canada
It is at Notre-Dame hospital that the patient is anesthetized and placed on the operating table.
The article from the Journal of the Canadian Association of Radiologists where the article on the lion from the Garden of Wonders appeared, in 1966. MRS
Diagnose the attack
The goal of the intervention is not to save the animal, but to diagnose the neurological damage. Moreover, two months after the passage in the operating room, the lion “still survived and is still in fairly good health”.
In 1962, Dr. Jules Hardy introduced to Canada a technique of electrophysiological exploration by recording using microelectrodes, which made him a pioneer of neurosurgery. Photo collection Denis Goulet Denis Goulet
The poor feline, like many other zoo animals, was seriously lacking space to exercise, thus causing premature aging.
The publication of this case would have “contributed to improving the condition of wild animals kept in captivity,” we can read in a site devoted to the history of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Montreal, where he taught for a long time.
Lions in captivity (here in the New York Zoo in 1900) suffered from neurological problems caused by their lack of exercise. Public domain
Notre-Dame de Montréal hospital in 1966 on Sherbrooke Street. Source: LP Meunier, Archives of the City of Montreal Montreal
Very proud
The Cato lion operation is just one anecdote in the career of Dr. Hardy, who went down in history for having developed cutting-edge technology making it possible to act on the brains of sick people without opening the skull. Having himself performed 3000 brain interventions, he has received numerous national and international awards for his contribution to neuroscience.
Operating room at Notre-Dame hospital in Montreal in 1966. Source: BAnQ BAnQ
Dr. Gérard Guiot (left), who introduced Dr. Hardy (right) to a surgical approach to pituitary tumors at Foch Hospital, France, congratulates him after 25 years of this type of intervention in Montreal in 1987 Source: Journal of neurosurgery Journal of Neurosurgery
Although this was well before the time when animal welfare was a concern in biomedical research laboratories, Dr. Hardy found it unfortunate that zoo animals suffered from various ailments linked to their captivity.
