182 THE ANATOMY AND DISEASES OF THE NOSE AND MOUTH. 



of the customer, and there glanders are seldom found ; but if the stables of 

 many of our post-horses, and of those employed on our canals, are examined, 

 almost too low for a tall horse to stand upright in them, too dark for tho 

 accumulation of filth to be perceived, too far from the eye of the master, ill 

 drained and ill paved, and governed by a false principle of economy, which 

 begrudges the labour of the man, and the cleanliness and comfort of the animal ; 

 these will be the very hotbeds of the disease, and in many of these establish- 

 ments it is an almost constant resident. 



Glanders may be produced by anything that injures, or for a length of time 

 acts upon and weakens, the vital energy of this membrane. They have been 

 known to follow a fracture of the bones of the nose. They have been the con- 

 sequence of violent catarrh, and particularly the long-continued discharge from 

 the nostrils, of which we have spoken. They have been produced by the 

 injection of stimulating and acrid substances up the nostril. Everything 

 that weakens the constitution generally will lead to glanders. It is not only 

 from bad stable management, but from the hardships which they endure, and 

 the exhausted state of their constitution, that post and machine horses are so 

 subject to glanders ; and there is scarcely an inflammatory disease to which the 

 horse is subject that is not occasionally wound up and terminated by the appear- 

 ance of glanders. 



Among the causes of glanders is want of regular exercise. The connexion, 

 although not evident at first glance, is too certain. When a horse has 

 been worked with peculiar severity, and is become out of spirits, and falls away 

 in flesh, and refuses to eat, a little rest and a few mashes would make all right 

 again ; but the groom plies him with cordials, and adds fuel to fire, and aggra- 

 vates the state of fever that has commenced. What is the necessary conse- 

 quence of this ? The weakest goes to the wall, and either the lungs or the feet, 

 or this membrane that of the nose the weakest of all, exposed day after day 

 to the stimulating, debilitating influences that have been described, becomes 

 the principal seat of inflammation that terminates in glanders. 



It is in this way that glanders have so frequently been known to follow a hard 

 day's chase. The seeds of the disease may have previously existed, but its 

 progress will be hastened by the general and febrile action excited the absurd 

 measures which are adopted not being calculated to subdue the fever, but to 

 increase the stimulus. 



Every exciting cause of disease exerts its chief and its worst influence on this 

 membrane. At the close of a severe campaign the horses are more than deci- 

 mated by this pest. At the termination of the Peninsular war the ravages of 

 this disease were dreadful. Every disease will predispose the membrane of the 

 nose to take on the inflammation of glanders, and with many, as strangles, 

 catarrh, bronchitis, and pneumonia, there is a continuity of membrane, an 

 association of function, and a thousand sympathies. 



There is not a disease which may not lay the foundation for glanders. 

 Weeks, and months, and years, may intervene between the predisposing cause 

 and the actual evil ; but at length the whole frame may become excited or 

 debilitated in many a way, and then this debilitated portion of it is the first to 

 yield to the attack. Atmospheric influence has somewhat to do with the pre- 

 valence of glanders. It is not so frequent in the summer as in the winter, 

 partly attributable, perhaps, to the different state of the stable in the summer 

 months, neither the ah- so close or so foul, nor the alternations of temperature 

 so great. 



There are some remarkable cases of the connexion of moisture, or moist 

 exhalations, that deserve record. When new stabling was built for the troops 

 at Hythe, and inhabited before the walls were perfectly dry, many of tho 



