PATHOLOGY. 107 



It seems abundantly clear, from experimentation by inocu- 

 lation with secretions or animal fluids containing tlie active 

 virus of tlie disease, that the power of unicity of infection is 

 constantly maintained, and that in every case where persistent 

 disturbance is induced, the terminal processes and tissue- 

 chansfes are of an uniform character ; that glanders will inva- 



o . 



riably produce glanders, and not tuberculosis or cancer. 

 Whether the obvious and accompanying elemental changes 

 are to be explained simply on chemico-physiological grounds, 

 without reference to individual life and life-processes in the 

 imported contagious elements, remains yet to be determined. 



b. Causation. — Although peculiarly a disease of the equine 

 species, glanders is undoubtedly capable of transmission to 

 many other animals, and to none probably oftener than to 

 man. While the susceptibility of the human subject to 

 become infected with the poison of glanders is considerable, it 

 has rarely been brought forward — or, if instanced, has been 

 unsupported by proof suflicient to satisfy — as a disease which 

 in man is capable of development apart from inoculation or 

 infection. In the horse this is quite different, and, although 

 amongst the greater number of those who in our day are culti- 

 vating pathological inquiry through experimentation, the 

 autochthonous origin of this disease, as also of all contagious 

 specific maladies, is being received with less favour, there is 

 yet, I am satisfied, particularly amongst practical veterinarians 

 whose work is confined to the large centres of the horse 

 population, both in this country and on the Continent, a very 

 firm conviction in the frequency, or at least possibility, of a 

 direct and spontaneous origin of glanders in horses. 



For my own part, reasoning from analogy, and the results of 

 a comparatively hmited experience, I have ever regarded the 

 spontaneous origin of glanders in horses as very problematical. 



If capable of being originated de novo, it is unlike the par- 

 ticular class — the specific communicable diseases — to which it 

 belongs, a class featm^e of which is that they are only capable 

 of propagation by the reception in the healthy of the specific 

 virus manufactured or proceeding from the diseased. Every 

 case of glanders with which I have come in contact has been 

 most reasonably accounted for on the theory of infection or in- 



