452. REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 
as I shall hereafter have an opportunity to show, to cover ignorance, 
fraud, and crime. It can be retained only if applied exelusively to such 
cases of disease (usually occult or incipient glanders) in which the horse 
has a suspicious-looking discharge from the nose, but shows no other 
characteristic symptoms sufficiently developed to base upon them a sure 
diagnosis. So, for instance, it may happen that a horse has a chronic 
discharge of matter and mucus from one or both nostrils, and, perhaps, 
also a distinctly limited swelling of the submaxillary lymphatic glands, 
and yet neither the discharge nor the swelling may be sufficiently charac- 
teristic to justify the decision that the horse in question is affected with 
glanders, because the latter is a disease which, for obvious reasons, de- 
mands a correct and positive diagnosis. To declare that a horse has 
elanders is equal to condemning the same to be killed. The term “nasal 
gleet,” therefore, is convenient and admissible, if used exclusively to 
signify a disorder of the respiratory organs attended with suspicious 
discharges from the nose, and other symptoms common in glanders, but 
not yet fully enough developed or sufficiently characteristic, one way or 
another, to make the existence or absence of glanders a certainty. Such 
a disorder, of course, must be considered as incipient or occult glanders 
till every doubt has been removed. 
Chronic and acute glanders.—Glanders, as a rule, is a chronic disease. 
The morbid changes develop slowly. Of the various forms in which the 
disease is able to make its appearance, pulmonal glanders, unless com- 
plicated with one of the other forms, or with other inflammatory or 
feverish diseases, is the most chronic, or takes the longest time to pro- 
duce conspicuous symptoms and to become fatal. It takes frequently 
two or three years before the animal succumbs. Nasal glanders is usu- 
ally not quite so slow in its progress; still it also very often takes half 
a year or longer before the morbid process makes sufficient headway to 
produce plain, unmistakable symptoms, or before the chancrous ulcers, 
characteristic of glanders, make their appearance in the mucous mem- 
brane of the septum of the nose. Farcy, or external glanders, is usually 
the least chronic (comes the soonest to a termination) of the various 
(uncombined) forms of glanders. Plain and unmistakable symptoms 
(veritable farey-ulcers) make their appearance almost always within 
three months and frequently within a week or two after the infection 
has taken place. In mules and asses, however, the various forms of 
glanders are usually less chronic, make a more rapid progress, are more 
destructive, and come sooner to a termination than in horses. The prog- 
ress of the morbid process depends also to a great extent upon the con- 
stitution and the organization of the animal and the mode and manner 
in which it is kept. Weather and temperature, too, have considerable 
influence; warm and dry weather usually retards, and cold, wet, and 
stormy or inclement weather usually accelerates and spreads the morbid 
process. Most authors discriminate between acute and a chronic form 
of glanders. From a practical standpoint such a distinction is perfectly 
admissible, but to separate acute and chronic glanders as two different 
diseases, as has been done by some (French) authors, must lead, and 
has led, to very dangerous mistakes and to great confusion. Every 
form of glanders, as I have said before, is naturally—eo ipso—inore or 
less chronic in its course, but may become acute, either from the first 
beginning or at any stage of its development, and sometimes very sud- 
denly, under any of the following conditions : 
1. Ifa complication takes place either with one of the other forms of 
glanders or with another disease or disorder. Sometimes even a small 
