470 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 
disease as among horses, notwithstanding that the former have more 
predisposition, are easier and sooner infected, and succumb quicker. 
If a protopathic development were possible, or frequently taking place, 
one should suppose that it would occur especially in those animals (asses 
and mules) which possess the greatest predisposition, or, in which, if af- 
fected, the morbid process is always the most rapid and the most violent. 
Besides that, asses and mules particularly, are, as a general rule, more 
exposed to bad treatment and to all those calamities which have been 
looked upon as probable causes of glanders, than horses. That glanders 
is not so frequent among asses and mules as among horses, is simply due 
to the fact that the former are less numerous and usually less exposed 
to the contagion, because less used on the road and for traveling pur- 
poses, than horses. Anexception, perhaps, may be made with the Amer- 
ican army, or with any other army in which mules are extensively em- 
ployed, and in them, I suppose, cases of glanders are just as frequent, 
and perhaps more frequent among the mules than among the horses. 
In modern times, most veterinary writers, it seems, have abandoned 
the possibility of an autochthonous or idiopathic origin of glanders, 
but the deuteropathic development is yet upheld by a greatmany. The 
diseases supposed to terminate in glanders are especially strangles or 
distemper, influenza, catarrhal affections of the respiratory mucous mem- 
branes, and ulceration in various parts of the animal body. ‘To enumer- 
ate all the eases recorded in the veterinary literature in which glanders 
is said or believed to have developed from other diseases, or been pro- 
duced by an absorption of matter, would lead too far, for the same are 
very numerous. As to the different theories that have been advanced, 
I have to refer to what has been said in the first part of this treatise. 
To show, however, how easily mistakes may be made, I may be allowed 
to relate a case that occurred last summer in Chicago. Several horses, 
constituting the stock of a bankrupt circus, all animals in a very fine 
condition, were put up for keeping by the authorities in charge, in a cer- 
tain livery and boarding stable. in the same stable influenza prevailed, 
and nearly every horse, excepting those circus-horses, became affected 
with influenza in its so-called catarrhalrheumatie form. Deaths did not 
occur, but some horses became affected severely. After the circus-horses 
had been in the livery-stable for several weeks they were sold by the 
United States marshal, and the day after the sale it was found that one 
of them, a fine black gelding, was affected with plainly developed nasal 
glanders, and had communicated the disease already to his stall-mate, 
which exhibited sufficient symptoms, a slight discharge from the right 
nostril and a characteristic swelling of the right submaxillary lymphatic 
gland, to warrant the diagnostication of glanders. After the discovery 
had been made, it leaked out that the black gelding had been “running 
from the nose” for over eight months. When the sale took place, some 
of the livery and boarding horses had not yet fully recovered from their 
influenza. Now, if one or more of the same should have become infected 
with gianders, and if the merely accidental discovery of the existence of 
that disease in one of the cireus-horses had not been made, the ery would 
have been raised immediately that gianders had developed from influ- 
enza. Further comments, I think, are unnecessary. It may suffice to 
sucgest that a great many apparent developments of glanders from other . 
diseases may have taken place in a similar way. There also can be no 
doubt that a great many cases of occult glanders (so-called nasal gleet) 
have been looked upon and treated as distemper, catarrh, influenza, &c., 
and afterwards, when plain symptoms of glanders made their appearance, 
it was more convenient all around to suppose that glanders had pro- 
