GLANDERS. 177 



Connected with vhis is an error too general, and highly mischievous with regard 

 to the character of this discharge in the earliest stage of the disease, when, if 

 ever, a cure might be effected, and when, too, the mischief from contagion is most 

 frequently produced. The discharge of glanders is not sticky when ic may bo 

 first recognised. It is an aqueous or mucous, but small and constant discharge, 

 and is thus distinguished from catarrh, or nasal gleet, or any other defluxion 

 from the nostril. It should be impressed on the mind of every horseman that 

 this small and constant defluxion, overlooked by the groom and by the owner, 

 and too often by the veterinary surgeon, is a most suspicious circumstance. 



Mr. James Turner deserves much credit for having first or chiefly directed 

 the attention of horsemen to this important but disregarded symptom. If a 

 horse is in the highest condition, yet has this small aqueous constant discharge, 

 and especially from one nostril, no time should be lost in separating him from 

 his companions. No harm will be done by this, although the defluxion should 

 not ultimately betray lurking mischief of a worse character. 



Mr. Turner relates a case very much in point. A farmer asked his opinion 

 respecting a mare in excellent condition, with a sleek coat, and in full work, 

 fle had had her seven or eight months, and during the whole of that time 

 there had been a discharge from the right nostril, but in so slight a degree as 

 scarcely to be deemed worthy of notice. He now wanted to sell her, but, like 

 an honest man, he wished to know whether he might warrant her. Mr. 

 Turner very properly gave it as his opinion, that the discharge having existed 

 for so long a time, he would not be justified in sending her into the market. 

 A farrier, however, whose ideas of glanders had always been connected with a 

 sticky discharge and an adherent gland, bought her, and led her away. 



Three months passed on, when Mr. Turner, examining the post-horses of a 

 neighbouring inn, discovered that two of them were glandered, and two more 

 farcied, while, standing next to the first that was attacked, and his partner in 

 work, was his old acquaintance, the farmer's mare, with the same discharge 

 from her nostril, and who had, beyond question, been the cause of all the 

 mischief. 



The peculiar viscidity and gluiness which is generally supposed to distin- 

 guish the discharge of glanders from all other mucous and prevalent secretions 

 belongs to the second stage of the disease, and, for many months before this, 

 glanders may have existed in an insidious and highly contagious form. It must 

 be acknowledged, however, that, in the majority of cases, some degree of sticki- 

 ness does characterise the discharge of glanders from a very early period. 



It is a singular circumstance, for which no satisfactory account has yet been 

 given, that when one nostril alone is attacked, it is, in a great majority of cases, 

 the near, or left. M. Dupuy, the director of the veterinary school at Toulouse, 

 gives a very singular account of this. He says that, out of eighty cases of 

 glanders that came under his notice, only one was affected in the right nostril. 

 The difference in the affected nostril does not exist to so great an extent in 

 Great Britain ; but, in two horses out of three, or three out of four, the dis- 

 charge is from the left nostril alone. We might account for the left leg failing 

 oftener than the right, for we mount and dismount on the left side ; the horse 

 generally leads with it, and there is more wear and tear of that limb : but we 

 cannot satisfactorily account for this usual affection of the left nostril. It is 

 true that the reins are held in the left hand, and there may be a little more 

 bearing and pressure on the left side of the mouth ; but this applies only to 

 saddle-horses, and even with them does not sufficiently explain the result. 



This discharge, in cases of infection, may continue, and in so slight a degree 

 as to be scarcely perceptible, for many months, or even two or three years, 

 unattended by any other disease, even ulceration of the nostril, and vet the 



N 



