GLAIRIN. 



GLASS MANUFACTURE. 



390 



the trident with which the retiarius is armed is not a weapon fitted for 

 speedily despatching a man, the poor wretch's fellow secutor, Hypolitus, 

 has to perform this last office, prior to encountering in his turn another 

 retiarius, who is seen waiting in the distance. 



GLAIRIN ; Baregin ; an azotised matter found in the water of hot 

 sulphureous springs. It has been compared to albumen and gelatin, 

 but its composition differs considerably from these bodies. It con- 

 sists of, 



Carbon 45-20 



Hydrogen 6-95 



Nitrogen 5-60 



A.h 40-70 



Oxygen l'S5 



100-00 



GLANDERS, or Farcy, is a name given by veterinary surgeons to 

 a disease affecting horses and other cattle. It appears in the form of a 

 suppurative disease of the mucous membrane of the nose and of a 

 pustular eruption. The former is sometimes called glanders and the 

 latter farcy, but the two often occur together, and the pus discharged 

 by the one will produce the other. In 1821, Mr. Muscroft drew 

 attention to the fact that this disease could be communicated from the 

 horse to the human system. In the same year cases occurred in Ger- 

 many, and since then it has been demonstrated by a large number of 

 cases that this disease often spreads from the horse to man. When it 

 attacks man it is characterised by vascular injection of the nasal 

 mucous membrane, on which chancre-like sores are formed, extending 

 to the frontal sinus and neighbouring mucous surfaces, from which a 

 profuse and offensive discharge flows. At the same time a tubercular 

 or pustular eruption appears upon the skin, followed by suppurating 

 bloody or gangrenous ulceration in various parts. These symptoms 

 may be either acute or chronic. In the acute cases a primary fever is 

 followed by the local disease. In chronic cases the local affection alone 

 presents itself. The acute disease is ushered in by rigors, pains in the 

 back and limbs. These symptoms are followed by phlegmonoua 

 tumours in various parts of the body, which are accompanied with pain 

 and tenderness, and terminate in abscesses or boils. At the same time 

 a discharge takes place from the nostrils of a matter more or less 

 purulent, viscid, and mixed with blood. The eyelids frequently 

 become tumefied, and discharge a thick viscid matter like that from 

 the nose. About the twelfth day of the disease an eruption breaks 

 out on the face, trunk, and limbs. It is preceded and accompanied by 

 profuse and fetid sweats. The eruption is scattered, and resembles, 

 according to circumstances, the vesicles of cow-pox, or the pustules of 

 small-pox or ecthyma. These are sometimes accompanied with large 

 vesicles (bulhe), which become black, and discharging leave gangrenous 

 sores. At first the pulse is full and quick ; but it becomes rapid, 

 small, irregular, and intermittent. The tongue is at first loaded with 

 white fur, which afterwards becomes brown or black. Diarrhoea and 

 tympanitis often come on in the course of the disease. This disease is 

 generally fatal from the seventeenth to the twenty-first day. In the 

 chronic cases the febrile symptoms are not so prominent. The local 

 symptoms are much the same, but they progress more slowly. The 

 abscesses are attended with a large amount of subcutaneous inflam- 

 mation. A twelvemonth has been known to elapse in such cases as 

 these before a patient has recovered or died. 



There is no doubt that these symptoms are the result of a poison 

 introduced into the system of man from the horse. In all cases con- 

 tact with glandered horses has been ascertained to have taken place 

 before the breaking out of the disease. Matter has been taken from 

 the ulcers and membranes in men, and horses have been inoculated, 

 and the disease has been produced. The disease has also been produced 

 by compelling animals to swallow the poisoned matter in their food. 

 There can, therefore, be no doubt that the poison can be absorbed 

 both from mucous and cutaneous surfaces. This being ascertained, it 

 becomes more than ever necessary to prevent contact with glandared 

 horses. Such horses have been known to give the disease to persons 

 riding behind them or passing near them by snorting the matter from 

 their nostrils into the air. All glandered horses ought to be destroyed. 

 In Germany the conviction of the danger of this disease is so strong, that 

 all horses proved to have come in contact with glandered horses are 

 ordered to be destroyed. Not only can this disease be communicated 

 from horse to horse, and from the horse to man, but cases have 

 occurred in which those attending glandered individuals have become 

 affected. The poison of glanders soon manifests itself. Mr. Turner 

 inoculated two young donkeys, and in one the maxillary glands became 

 toii'lor on the second day, and the discharge took place from the nose 

 on tjie third day, whilst in the second the glands became swollen on 

 the third day, and the discharge took place on the sixth. Cases have 

 been recorded in which the incubation of the poison must have taken 

 at least three months. In the human being the poison has remained 

 latent from two to eight days after exposure. 



This disease in its acute form is very fatal. Of fifteen cases 

 recorded by Rayer only one recovered. Of the treatment, therefore, 

 little can be said as a matter of experience. The general symptom* 

 in tin; latter stages are those of low malignant fever, and a stimulant 

 plan of treatment is indicated. Cages have been bled and cupped, and 

 the blood was buffed, but there is no reason to believe that the 



bleeding did any good. In the chronic forms of the disease recover}' 

 is more frequent. The symptoms indicate the necessity of a 

 generous diet. 



We add the following remarks by Mr. Finlay Dun, V.S., in the 14th 

 vol. of the ' English Agricultural Society's Journal,' pp. 128, 129 : 



"From their weak and unsound constitution, horses of a scrofulous 

 diathesis are unusually prone to glanders and farcy two forms of a 

 disease peculiar (at least as an original disease) to the equine species. 

 As has been already remarked, it is characterised by a specific unhealthy 

 inflammation, identical in all important characters with the syphilitic 

 inflammation in man. From the dire and loathsome nature of glanders^ 

 and the terror in which it is held, animals affected by it are never 

 used for breeding, so that we have little opportunity of judging of its 

 hereditary nature. There is no evidence (so far as I know) which 

 proves it to be directly hereditary, but there is no doubt that the 

 progeny of a glanderous horse would exhibit an unusually strong 

 tendency to the disease. Though I am not aware of any facts proving 

 gknders to be congenital, yet I think there is every probability that 

 such is the case ; for it is notorious that syphilis, the analogous 

 disease in the human subject, is congenital, and often appears at 

 birth in the children of women affected by that disease. Its ordinary 

 predisposing causes are, many of them, hereditary : it is very prone 

 to attack animals of a weak or vitiated constitution. It is emphatically 

 the disease which cuts off all horses that have had their vital energies 

 reduced below the healthy standard, either by inherent or acquired 

 causes. Glanders is also sometimes caused by inoculation ; is fre- 

 quently produced in healthy subjects by mismanagement, as by in- 

 sufficient food, want of shelter, and overwork ; and often supervenes 

 on bad attacks of influenza, strangles, diabetes, and other diseases 

 which debilitate the system, or impair the integrity of any of its more 

 important parts. These causes appear to possess the power of engen- 

 dering in the constitution of the horse a peculiar poison, which, as it 

 reproduces itself, and spreads to all parts of the body, gives rise to 

 the characteristic symptoms of glanders, causing, sooner or later, a 

 breaking up of the system, and a fatal prostration of the vital powers. 

 This poison produces in the blood abnormal changes, which vitiate 

 that fluid, and unfit it for healthy nutrition. From the irritant action 

 of the morbid fluids passing through them, the lymphatic glands and 

 vessels become inflamed, and lymph is deposited. This, however, 

 being of an unhealthy nature, soon runs on to softening, which extends 

 to the skin overlying the part, and ulcerating farcy-buds are formed. 

 On the surface of the more vascular mucous membranes effusions of 

 tubercular matter are also poured out ; these take on an unhealthy 

 inflammation, and degenerate into chancrous ulcers, which may gene- 

 rally be seen on the mucous membrane of the nostrils in most bad 

 cases of glanders." 



GLASS MANUFACTURE. Glass, one of the most beautiful of 

 manufactured products, is a transparent, solid, and hard substance, 

 exceedingly brittle while cold ; but by the application of a high degree 

 of heat it is rendered so flexible and tenacious that it may with the 

 utmost facility be moulded into any form. It is so ductile while 

 heated, that it may be spun into filaments of the greatest conceivable 

 fineness ; and these when cold are exceedingly pliant and elastic. 



The time at which glass was invented is very uncertain. The 

 popular opinion upon this subject refers the discovery to accident. 

 It is said (Plin. ' Nat. Hist.' lib. xxxvi., e. 26) " that some mariners, 

 who had a cargo of nitrum (salt, or, as some have supposed, soda) on 

 board, having landed on the banks of the river Belus, a small stream 

 at the base of Mount Carmel in Palestine, and finding no stones to reat 

 their pots on, placed under them some masses of nitrum, which, being 

 fused by the heat with the sand of the river, produced a liquid and 

 transparent stream : such was the origin of glass." The ancient 

 Egyptians were certainly acquainted with the art of glass-making. 

 This subject is very fully discussed in a memoir by M. Boudet, in the 

 ' Description de 1'Egypt/ vol. ix., Antiq. Memoires. The earthenware 

 beads found in some mummy cases have an external coat of glass, 

 coloured with a metallic oxide : and among the ruins of Thebes pieces 

 of blue glass have been discovered. Sir Gardner Wilkinson adduces 

 three distinct proofs that the art of glass- working was known in Egypt 

 before the exodus of the children of Israel from that land, more than 

 3500 years ago. The manufacture of glass was long carried on at 

 Alexandria, from which city the Romans were supplied with that 

 material ; but before the time of Pliny it had been introduced into 

 Italy, France, and Spain (xxxvi., c. 26). Glass utensils have been found 

 among the ruins of Herculaneum. 



The application of glass to the glazing of windows is of comparatively 

 modem introduction, at least in northern and western Europe. In 

 the year 674 artiste were brought to England from abroad to glaze the 

 church windows at Weremouth in Durham ; but even in the year 1567 

 this mode of excluding cold from dwellings was confined to large e.-ita 

 blishments, and by no means universal even in them. An entry then 

 made in the minutes of a survey of Aluwick Castle, the residence of 

 the Duke of Northumberland, informs us that the glass casements were 

 taken down during the absence of the family, to preserve them from 

 accident. A century after that time the use of window-glass was so 

 small in Scotland that only the upper rooms in the royal palaces were 

 furnished with it, the lower part having wooden shutters to admit or 

 exclude the air. It may be presumed that this window-glass was of 



