186 THE ANATOMY AND DISEASES OF THE NOSE AND MOUTH 



pale surface. They are true chancres, and they discharge a virus as infectious 

 and as dangerous as the matter of glanders. While they remain in their hard 

 prominent state, they are called buttons or farcy buds ; and they are connected 

 together by the inflamed and corded veins. 



In some cases the horse will droop for many a day before the appearance of 

 the corded veins or buds his appetite will be impaired his coat will stare 

 he will lose flesh. The poison is evidently at work, but has not gained suffi- 

 cient power to cause the absorbents to enlarge. In a few cases these buds do not 

 ulcerate, but become hard and difficult to disperse. The progress of the disease 

 is then suspended, and possibly for some months the horse will appear to be 

 restored to health ; but he bears the seeds of the malady about him, and in due 

 time the farcy assumes its virulent form, and hurries him off. These buda 

 have sometimes been confounded with the little tumours or lumps termed 

 surfeit. They are generally higher than these tumours, and not so broad. 

 They have a more knotty character, and are principally found on the inside 

 of the limbs, instead of the outside. 



Few things are more unlike, or more perplexing, than the different forms which 

 farcy assumes at different times. One of the legs, and particularly one of the 

 hinder legs, will suddenly swell to an enormous size. At night the horse will 

 appear to be perfectly well, and in the morning one leg will be three times the size 

 of the other, with considerable fever, and scarcely the power of moving the limb. 



At other times the head will be subject to this enlargement, the muzzle par- 

 ticularly will swell, and an offensive discharge will proceed from the nose. Some - 

 times the horse will gradually lose flesh and strength ; he will be hide- bound ; 

 mangy eruptions will appear in different parts; the legs will swell ; cracks will 

 be seen at the heels, and an inexperienced person may conceive it to be a mere 

 want of condition, combined with grease. 



By degrees the affection becomes general. The virus has reached the termi- 

 nation of the absorbents, and mingles with the general circulating fluid, and is 

 conveyed with the blood to every part of the frame. There are no longer any 

 valves to impede its progress, and consequently no knots or buds, but the 

 myriads of capillary absorbents that penetrate every part become inflamed, and 

 thickened, and enlarged, and cease to discharge their function. Hence arises 

 enlargement of the substance of various parts, swellings of the legs, and chest, 

 and head sudden, painful, enormous, and distinguished by a heat and tender- 

 ness, which do not accompany other enlargements. 



It is a question somewhat difficult to answer, whether farcy can exist without 

 previous glanders. Probably it cannot. There is the long-continued insidious 

 progress of glanders the time which may elapse, and often does, before the owner 

 is aware or the veterinary surgeon sure of it the possibility that minute ulceration 

 may have for a long while existed in some of the recesses of the nose or that the 

 slight discharge, undreaded and unrecognised, yet vitiated, poisoned, and capable of 

 communicating the disease, may have been long travelling through the frame 

 and affecting the absorbents, and preparing for the sudden display of farcy. 



One thing, however, is undeniable, that farcy does not long and extensively 

 prevail without being accompanied by glanders that even in the mild stages 

 of farcy, glanders may be seen if looked for, and that it never destroys the 

 animal without plainly associating itself with glanders. They are, in fact, stages 

 of the same disease. 



Glanders is inflammatfon of the membrane of the nose, producing an 

 altered and poisonous secretion, and when sufficient of this vitiated secretion 

 has been taken up to produce inflammation and ulceration of the absorb- 

 ents, farcy is established. Its progress is occasionally very capricious, 

 continuing in a few cases for months and years, the vigour of the horse remain- 



