FARCY. 185 



baked or washed, and the pails newly painted, and the iron- work exposed to a 

 red heat, all danger will cease. 



Little that is satisfactory can be said of the prevention of glanders. 



The first and most effectual mode of prevention will be to keep the stables 

 eool and well ventilated, for the hot and poisoned air of low and confined stables 

 is one of the most prevalent causes of glanders. 



Next to ventilation stands cleanliness ; for the foul air from the fermenting 

 litter, and urine, and dung, must not only be highly injurious to health gene- 

 rail \ r , but irritate and predispose to inflammation that delicate membrane 

 which is the primary seat of the disease. If to this be added regular exercise, 

 and occasional green meat during the summer, and carrots in the winter, we 

 shall have stated all that can be done in the way of prevention. 



Glanders in the human being. It cannot be too often repeated, that a gian- 

 dered horse can rarely remain among sound ones without serious mischief 

 ensuing ; and, worse than all, the man who attends on that horse is in danger. 

 The cases are now becoming far too numerous in which the groom or the 

 veterinary surgeon attending on glandered horses becomes infected, and in the 

 majority of cases dies. It is, however, somewhat more manageable in the 

 human being than in the quadruped. Some cases of recovery from farcy and 

 glanders stand on record with regard to the human being, but they are few and 

 far between. 



FARCY. 



Farcy is intimately connected with glanders ; they will run into each other, 

 or their symptoms will mingle together, and before either arrives at its fatal 

 termination its associate will almost invariably appear. An animal inoculated 

 with the matter of farcy will often be afflicted with glanders, while the matter 

 of glanders will frequently produce farcy. They are different types or stages 

 of the same disease. There is, however, a very material difference in their 

 symptoms and progress, and this most important one of all, that while glanders 

 are generally incurable, farcy, in its early stage and mild form, may be success- 

 fully treated. 



While the capillary vessels of the arteries are everywhere employed in build- 

 ing up the frame, the absorbents are no less diligently at work in selecting 

 and carrying away every useless or worn-out portion or part of it. There is no 

 surface there is no assignable spot on which thousands of these little mouths 

 do not open. In the discharge of their duty, they not only remove that which 

 is become useless, and often that which is healthy, but that which is poisonous 

 and destructive. They open upon the surface of every glanderous chancre. 

 They absorb a portion of the virus which is secreted by the ulcer, and as it 

 passes along these little tubes, they suffer from its acrimonious quality ; hence 

 the corded veins, as they are called by the farrier, or, more properly, the thick- 

 ened and inflamed absorbents following the course of the veins. 



At certain distances in the course of the absorbents are loose duplicatures of 

 the lining membrane, which are pressed against the side of the vessel and 

 permit the fluid to pass in a direction towards the chest, but belly out and im- 

 pede or arrest its progress from the chest. The virus at these places, and the 

 additional inflammation there excited, is to a greater or less degree evident to 

 the eye and to the feeling. They are usually first observed about the lips, the 

 nose, the neck, and the thighs. They are very hard even of a scirrhous 

 hardness, more or less tender, and with perceptible heat about them. 



The poisonous matter being thus confined and pressing on the part, suppuration 

 and ulceration ensue. The ulcers have the same character as the glanderous ones 

 011 the membrane of the nose. They are rounded, with an elevated edge and a 



