180 THE DISEASES OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



7,000 horses, the disease is unknown, and the same is true of Ice- 

 land, with about 35,000 horses. 



No one would, I think, be bold enough to assert that these ani- 

 mals are not as much subjected to the evil influences of exposure, 

 poor feed, pneumonia, etc., as the horses of more favored climates. 



While we can not help expressing our surprise that authors of 

 undoubted practical experience should still hold to the spontaneous 

 generation of glanders, and give it up for nearly all other similar 

 diseases, it is still more surprising that any person of sense can hold 

 to the utterly illogical, metachemical, or degeneration theory by 

 which one disease transforms itself into another, without the aid of 

 cause. 



Such a thing is opposed to both common sense and experience. 

 "What, then, must we consider the cause of glanders ? In our day, 

 contagion, and nothing else ! 



A specific but unknown inficiens enters the organism and pro- 

 duces results, in general, only observed in this disease. 



In accordance with the best results of modern pathologists, we 

 must assume this inficiens to be of an organic, formative nature ; that 

 is, belonging to the bacterial world. Chauveau has looked upon pe- 

 culiar cells as the etiological moment, but this is not in accordance 

 with our present views, though in one sense, but not in his, the 

 bacteria are cells. Frank has looked upon some chemical material 

 as the inficiens, and has demonstrated that the nasal discharge and 

 blood of glandered horses possessed catalytic action, and could trans- 

 form peroxide of hydrogen into O and H 2 0. 



Hallier, Mueller, Semmer, Zurn, and others, have all described 

 bacteria found in the blood and secretions. Schutz claims to have 

 discovered, cultivated, and produced the disease by inoculating them. 

 These germs must either act of themselves, which, from the nature 

 of the disease, is scarcely probable, or, which is more likely to be 

 true, by means of some irritants which they themselves produce by 

 certain unknown metachemical processes. 



Such an irritant is absolutely necessary to explain the slowly- 

 developing processes of chronic glanders — the (as we shall see) 

 gradual complication of the stroma, or interstitial tissues of many of 

 the most important organs. 



It is not in conformity with our knowledge of germ-life that 

 they can directly act in this manner. Zurn * describes the bacteria 

 of glanders as follows : " In the blood of horses diseased with gland- 

 ers I have found micrococci, and strings of the same — streptococci — 



* " Pflanzlicben Parasiten," p. 375. 



