134 ANATOMY AND DISEASES OF THE NOSE AND MOUTH. 



--the weakest of all, exposed day after day to the stimulating, debilitating infla 

 that have been described, becomes the principal seat of inflammation that ten linates 

 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 

 arhich are adopted not being calculated to subdue the fever, but to increase the stim- 

 dus. 



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

 brane. At the close of a severe campaign the horses are more than decimated 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 pneu- 

 monia, 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 prevalence of glanders. It is not so frequent 

 in summer as in the winter, partly attributable, perhaps, to the different state of the 

 stable in the summer months, neither the air so close or so foul, nor the alternations 

 of temperature so great. 



There are some remarkable cases of the connexion of moistui e, or moist exhala- 

 tions, that deserve record. When new stabling was built for the troops at Hythe, 

 and inhabited before the walls were perfectly dry, many of the horses that had been 

 removed from an open, dry, and healthy situation, became affected with glanders ; 

 but, some time having passed over, the horses in these stables were as healthy as the 

 others, and glanders ceased to appear. An innkeeper at Wakefield built some exten- 

 sive stabling for his horses, and, inhabiting them too soon, lost a great proportion of 

 his cattle from glanders. There are not now more healthy stables in the place. The 

 immense range of stables under the Adelphi, in the Strand, where light never enters, 

 and the supply of fresh air is not too abundant, were for a long time notoriously un- 

 healthy, and many valuable horses were destroyed by glanders ; but now they are 

 filled with the finest wagon and dray-horses that the metropolis or the country con- 

 tains, and they are fully as healthy as in the majority of stables above-ground. 



There is one more cause to be slightly mentioned hereditary predisposition. This 

 has not been sufficiently estimated, with regard to the question now under considera- 

 tion, as well as with respect to everything connected with the breeding of the horse. 

 There is scarcely a disease that does not run in the stock. There is that in the struc- 

 ture of various parts, or their disposition to be affected by certain influences, which 

 perpetuates in the offspring the diseases of the sire ; and thus contraction, ophthalmia, 

 roaring, are decidedly hereditary, and so is glanders. M. Dupuy relates some deci- 

 sive caees. A mare, on dissection, exhibited every appearance of glanders ; her filly, 

 who resembled her in form and in her vicious propensities, died glandered at six years 

 old. A second and a third mare, and their foals, presented the same fatal proof that 

 glanders are hereditary. 



Glanders are highly contagious. The farmer cannot be too deeply impressed with 

 the certainty of this. Considering the degree to which this disease, even at the pre 

 sent day, often prevails, the legislature would be justified in interfering, by some 

 evere enactments, as it has done in the case of the small-pox in the human subject. 



The early and marked symptom of glanders, is a discharge from the nostrils of a 

 peculiar character; and if that, even before it becomes purulent, is rubbed on a 

 wound, or on a mucous surface, as the nostrils, it will produce a similar disease. If 

 the division between two horses were sufficiently high to prevent all smelling and 

 snorting at each other, and contact of every kind, and they drank not out of the same 

 pail, a sound horse might live for years, uninfected, by the side of a glandered one. 

 The matter of glanders has been mixed up into a ball, and given to a healthy horse, 

 effect. Some horses have eaten the hay left by those that -were glaiidered, 



