PECULIAR TO HOESES. 85 



ceptible state, by bad keep, over-work, exposure to cold and wet, 

 &c., or through the faUure of any of its principal organs, especially 

 of the lungs. Constitutional predisposition may, therefore, prove to 

 be either natural or acquired. 



"Age, we well know, has considerable influence in predisposing 

 horses to take diseases of the air passages — to take catarrh, bron- 

 chitis, strangles, glanders. We have no reason, however, to suppose 

 that this influence is operative in the case of glanders in particular^ 

 for the same reason that a young horse is more likely to catch a cold 

 than an old. For the same reason, should he go within the reach 

 of the exciting causes of glanders, he may be considered as especi- 

 ally predisposed to that disease. Out of forty cases of farcy and 

 glanders occurring in the Ordnance, under the superintendence of 

 my father, and, latterly, of myself, the ages of which happen to be 

 registered, one was three years old, one four years old, six in the 

 sixth year, six in their seventh year, six in eighth, five in their ninth, 

 eleven ten years old and upwards. Consequently, so far as this 

 brief account goes, the adult and middle ages ai:)pear to sufier most 

 from the disease. 



" In respect to climate and soil, it would appear that glanders 

 is a rare disease in cold, and absolutely unknown in hot climates, in 

 Arabia and Africa, to which, I believe, we may add India ; my 

 cousin, Mr. Charles Percival, having informed me that, during his 

 eight years' residence in Bengal, while serving in the eleventh 

 light dragoons, quartered at Meerut and Cawnpooi'e, he had not a 

 single case either of farcy or glanders. M. Saunier, veterinary sur- 

 geon to the king of Portugal, assured Dupuy that no case of glan- 

 ders had occurred, to his knowledge, during the thirty years he had 

 been living at Lisbon. This was prior to the occupation of that 

 country by British troops. At the time of the Peninsular cam- 

 paign, every body in our army knew that both farcy and glanders 

 prevailed to a great extent, particularly among the mules that were 

 in our employ as bat animals. To what such dread changes were 

 owing — why a country, at one time said to be free from any such 

 disease, should, some years after, become, as it were, the very focus 

 of contamination — is a fact Avhich, if I mistake not, may prove of 

 some importance to us in the investigation we are about to make in 

 the exciting causes of glanders. 



"Wet and cold are at all times prejudicial to horses' constitutions, 

 and especially to those either very young or very old ; and though 

 the better their feed the less they are likely to suffer under such ex- 

 posure, yet will these agents predispose and be very apt to lay the 

 foundation for pulmonary, mesenteric, and glandular disease, which, 

 in the end, will produce farcy and glanders. 



" Before we proceed to the consideration of the second class of 

 causes, viz., the exciting causes, it will be well for us to inform our- 

 selves of the opinion of such veterinary writers, foreign as well as 

 British, as appear to have paid much attention to the subject, and 

 particularly to that all-important branch of it, contagion ; a branch 

 which, at one period of time, has had supporters on all sides, while 

 at another it has been left almost without any. These I shall arrange 

 in the order of the date of the respective works. 



" Solleysell, 1669, pronounced glanders to be ' the most contagious 



