114 FARCY. 



PARCY 



Farcy is intimately connected with glanders ; they will rui* 

 into each other, or their symptoms will mingle together, anu 

 before either arrives at its fatal termination its associate wih 

 almost invariably appear. An animal inocculated with the 

 matter of farcy will often be afflicted with glanders, while the 

 matter of glanders will frequently produce farcy. They are 

 different types or stages of the same disease. There is, how- 

 ever, a very material difference in their "symptoms and progress, 

 and this most important one of all, that while glanders are 

 generally incurable, farcy, in its early stage and mild form, m.ay 

 be successfully treated. 



While the capillary vessels of the arteries are everywhere 

 employed in building up the frame, the absorbents are no less 

 diligently at work in selecting and carrying away every useless 

 or worn-out portion or part of it. There is no surface on which 

 thousands of these little mouths do not open. Opening on the 

 surfaces of glanderous ulcers, they absorb a portion of the virus 

 secreted by them, and as it passes through these little tubes, 

 they become thickened and inflamed by means of its acrimonious 

 qualities, and hence they received the name of corded vein?, from 

 farriers who mistook them for the veins whose courses they 

 follow. 



At certain distances in the course of the absorbents are 

 natural valves, or loose duplicatures of the lining membrane, 

 which are pressed against the side of the vessel and permit the 

 fluid to pass in a direction towards the chest, but belly out and 

 impede or arrest its progress from the chest. The virus at these 

 places, and the additional inflammation there excited, is to a 

 greater or less degree evident to the eye and to the feeling. 

 They are usually first observed about the lips, the nose, the neck, 

 and the thighs. They are very hard — even of a scirrhous hard- 

 ness, more or less tender, and with perceptible heat about 

 them. 



The poisonous matter being thus confined and pressing on the 

 part, suppuration and ulceration ensue. The ulcers have the 



it so with regard to the horse, but it is capable of being communicated to 

 the human being- ; and, indeed, there have been very many deaths from this 

 cause, and most horrible deaths they are. It is generally by means of 

 eome cut or abrasion which comes in contact with the glandered matter, 

 that the infection is communicated. The utmost caution should, therefore, 

 be exercised by the attendants ; and it is most unpardonable to keep glan- 

 dered horses any length of time for the sake of their work ; and we are 

 scarcely justified in tampering long with them under tlie idea of effecting a 

 cure, when the cases are decidedly glandered. 



