GLANDERS. 



Bt Dr. H. J. De'kmees, V. S., Chicago, lU. 



Definition. — Glanders is a contagious cTl'sease siii generic of animals 

 belonging to tlie genus eqmis. It has usually a clironic course, can bo 

 communicated by means of its contagion to several otlier species of ani- 

 mals and to human beings, and must be considered incurable if fully 

 developed. The principal seat of the morbid process is usually in the 

 mucous membrane of the nasal cavities. Thi'ee main symptoms, viz., 

 dischai'gesfrom the nose, swelling of the submaxillary lymphatic glands, 

 and particularly ulcers of a peculiar, chancrous character in the mucous 

 membrane of the septum of the nose, characterize glanders, and are, 

 therefore, of the greatest diagnostic value. Wherever these three 

 symptoms, or only two of them, are present and fuUy developed, there 

 the diagnosis is secured. But unfortimately this is not always the case ; 

 sometimes two, and even all three, principal symptoms may be wanting, 

 and stiU the horse may be affected with glanders. In such a case the 

 seat of the morbid process is not in the nasal cavities, but further on in. 

 the respiratory passages, or even in the lungs. Several such cases have 

 come to my observation, and have also been described by others, espe- 

 cially by Professor Gerlach. In still other cases, in which the disease 

 might bo called ''external glanders," but is better known by the name 

 of ^' farcy," the morbid process has its priucipal, or even its exclusive, 

 seat in the subcutaneous connective tissue and in the sldn or cutis. The 

 late Professor Gerlach, in his treatise on Glanders, i)ubhshed in the 

 '■'Jahreshericht der Koeniglichen ThicrarznciscJmJe sic Hannover, 1868, 

 discriminates, in. consequence of these differences, three distiuct forms : 

 Nasal or common glanders, pulmonal glanders, and farcy. As such a 

 division of glanders proper into nasal and pulmonal glanders — farcy ia 

 described by every author under a separate head — facilitates considera- 

 bly the diagnosis, and explains also at once why just those symptoms 

 which are usually looked upon as most characteristic remain sometimes 

 imperfectly developed, or entirely unobserved, it wiU be convenient to 

 adopt Gerlach's classification. 



1. Nasal Glandees. — This form is that which is most common, best 

 known, and characterized by the three principal symptoms which have 

 been mentioned. 



(«.) The discharge from the nose, although the most conspicuous of those 

 three symptoms, is really the one which is the least characteristic, or of 

 the least diagnostic value, because several other diseases of the respira- 

 tory organs are also attended with discharges from the nose, which are 

 more or less similar. It is true, the discharge in glanders possesses some 

 properties which, if considered as a total, are characteristic and are not 

 found combined in any other disease ; but the difficulty is one or another 

 of these qualities is not always sufficiently developed. Consequently, if 

 the other two principal symptoms, the swelling of the lympliatic glands 

 and the ulcers in the nose, are absent or not observed, tlio discharges 



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