GLANDERS. 125 



oreathed, but Ihere are other and more powerful sources of mischief. The 

 dung and the urine are suffered to remain fermenting, .and giving out 

 injurious gases. In many dark and ill-managed stables, a portion of the 

 dung may be swept away, but the urine lies for days at the bottom of the 

 bed, the disgusting and putrifying nature of which is ill concealed by a little 

 fresh straw, which the lazy horse-keeper scatters over the top. 



The stables of the gentleman are generally kept hot enough, and far too 

 hot, although in many of them a more rational mode of treatment is begin- 

 ning to be adopted ; but they are lofty and roomy, and the horses are not 

 too much crowded together, and a most scrupulous regard is paid to 

 cleanliness: Glanders seldom prevail there. The stables of the farmer are 

 ill-managed and filthy enough, and the ordure and urine sometimes remaia 

 from week to week, until the horse lies on a perfect dunghill ; while there 

 is no declivity to drain away the moisture, nor any regular pavement to 

 prevent it from soaking into the earth, nor any water to clean even the 

 surface ; but the only instrument of purification is an old stumped broom. 

 Glanders seldom prevail there ; for the same carelessness which permits the 

 filth to accumulate, leaves many a crany for the wind to enter, and sweep 

 away the deleterious fumes from this badly-roofed and unceiled place. 



The stables of the horse-dealer are hot enough ; but a principle of strict 

 cleanliness is enforced, for there must be nothing to offend the eye or the 

 nose of the customer ; and there glanders are seldom found : but if the 

 stables of many of our post-horses, and of those employed on our canals, 

 be examined, almost too low for a tall horse to stand upright — too dark for 

 the accumulation of filth to be perceived — too far from the eye of the master: 

 ill-drained and ill-paved ; and governed by a false principle of economy, 

 which grudges the labour of the man, and the cleanliness and comfort of 

 the animal : these will be the very hot-beds of the disease, and in many of 

 these establishments it is an almost constant resident. 



When speaking of inflammation of the eye, and the effect of ill-ventilated 

 stables in producing it, we remarked that the urine of the horse contained 

 an unusually large quantity of hartshorn ; that the litter wetted by it was 

 disposed most rapidly to ferment ; and that the gases extricated must be 

 extremely prejudicial to so delicate an organ. It may, then, be easily im- 

 agined that the constant presence of those pungent fumes, and the irritation 

 which they would cause on that membrane which is the very seat of smell, 

 must predispose for, and often generate a disease which is primarily an affec- 

 tion of this membrane. 



Glanders may be produced by any thing that injures, or for a length of 

 time acts upon, and weakens the vital energy of this membrane. They 

 have been known to follow a fracture of the bones of the nose : they have 

 been the consequence of violent catarrh, and particularly the long-continued 

 discharge from the nostrils, of which we have spoken : they have been pro- 

 duced by the injection of stimulating and acrid substances up the nostril ; 

 and every thing that weakens the constitution generally, will lead to glanders. 

 It is not only from bad stable-management, but from the hardships which 

 they endure, and the exhausted state of their constitution, that post and 

 machine-horses are so subject to glanders ; and there is scarcely an inflam- 

 matory disease to which the horse is subject, that is not occasionally wound 

 up and terminated by the appearance of glanders. 



Glanders, however, are highly contagious. The farmer cannot be too 

 well aware of this ; and, considering the degree to which they often prevail, 

 the legislature would be justified in interfering by some severe enactments, 

 as they have done in the case of the small-pox in the human subject. 



