148 GLANDERS AND FARCY. 



dependently of a prior existence of the specific virus ; so long as 

 we regard the specific infecting medium or contagion as only- 

 fixed and not also volatile, so long will' our endeavours for 

 the extinction of this disease want definiteness of purpose and 

 unity and strength of action, without which they must ever be 

 vacillating, weak, and inadequate to accomplish the ends con- 

 templated. By those who favour the idea of its spontaneous 

 development we are pointed to those recurring outbreaks, after 

 its apparent disappearance, in stables where large numbers of 

 horses are located, when these have been suddenly subjected to 

 vitiating and depressing agencies, such as overwork, defective 

 food, and bad sanitary arrangements. This coincidence and 

 the determining influence of these adverse factors are most 

 willingly allowed, but they may at the same time be sus- 

 ceptible of an entirely different interpretation ; for aught we 

 know to the contrary, these are only the agents in the produc- 

 tion of a visible and local development of symptoms proceeding 

 from a previously existing and long-established though occult 

 disease. Like every other specific contagious disease, its 

 existence is always favoured by the care with which it is kept 

 ahve in individual cases and in centres of origin by medical 

 treatment of the affected, by disregard or imperfectly carrying 

 out of properly digested measures for the prevention and 

 eradication of the disease. 



All who are connected professionally with horses congre- 

 gated in large numbers, particularly in our centres of trade 

 and population, know how difficult it is when glanders once 

 obtains a location among hard-working horses to arrest its pro- 

 gress and secure its disappearance. In all such cases there is 

 little doubt that unhealthy and crowded stables, overworking, 

 and underfeeding aged and otherwise debilitated animals, tend 

 much to furnish at least a suitable soil for the development of 

 the specific infecting material Avhen placed there. 



It is probably more through timidity, and a desire to save 

 both life and money by retaining in the establishment animals 

 which may be designated only suspicious, and which at the 

 particular time of examination could not conscientiously be 

 condemned as undoubtedly glandered, than by the simple and 

 uncomplicated influence of vitiating agents, that the con- 

 tinuous though intermitting appearance of the disease is main- 



