2G4 GLANDERS AND FARCY. 



as I shall hereafter have an opjiortunity to sho-u^, to cover ij^^norance, 

 fraud, and crime. It can be retained only if applied exclusively to such 

 cases of disease (usually occult or incipient glanders) in which the horse 

 lias a suspicious-lookint; discharge from the nose, but shows no other 

 <;haracteristic symjitoms sufficiently developed to base upon them a sure 

 diagnosis. So, for instance, it may happen that a horse has a chronic 

 discharge of matter and mucus li-om one or both nostrils, and, i)erhaps, 

 also a tlistinctly limited swelling of the submaxillary lymphatic glands, 

 and yet neither the discharge nor the swelling may be sufficiently charac- 

 teristic to justify the decision that the horse in question is affected with 

 glanders, because the latter is a disease which, for ob^dous reasons, de- 

 mands a correct and positive diagnosis. To declare that a horse has 

 glanders is equal to condemning the same to be killed. The term " nasal 

 gleet," therefore, is convenient and admissible, if used exclusively to 

 signily a disorder of the respiratory organs attended with suspicious 

 discharges from the nose, and other symptoms common in glanders, but 

 not yet fully enough developed or sufficiently characteristic, one way or 

 another, to make the existence or absence of glanders a certainty. Such 

 a disorder, of course, must be considered as incipient or occult glanders 

 till every doubt has been removed. 



Chronic and acute glanders. — Glanders, as a rule, is a chronic disease. 

 The morbid changes develop slowly. Of the various forms in which the 

 disease is able to make its appearance, pulmonal glanders, unless com- 

 jilicated with one of the other forms, or with other inflammatory or 

 feverish diseases, is the most chronic, or takes the longest time to pro- 

 duce conspicuous symptoms and to become fatal. It takes frequently 

 two or three years Ibefore the animal succumbs. iTasal glanders is usu- 

 ally not quite so slow in its progress ; still it also very often takes half 

 a year or longer before the morbid process makes sulficient headway to 

 produce plain, unmistakable symptoms, or before the chaucrous ulcers, 

 characteristic of glanders, make their appearance in the mucous mem- 

 brane of the septum of the nose. Farcy, or external glanders, is usually 

 the least chronic (comes the soonest to a termination) of the various 

 (uncombined) forms of glanders. Plain and unmistakable symptoms 

 (veritable farcy-ulcers) make their appearance almost always within 

 three months and frequently within a week or two after the infection 

 has taken lilace. In mules and asses, however, the various forms of 

 glanders are usually less chronic, make a more rapid progress, are more 

 destructive, and come sooner to a termination than in horses. The prog- 

 ress of the morbid process depends also to a great extent upon the con- 

 stitution and the organization of the animal and the mode and manner 

 in which it is kept. Weather and temperature, too, have considerable 

 imfiiience ; warm and dry weather usually retards, and cold, wet, and 

 stormy or inclement weather usually accelerates and spreads the morbid 

 process. Most authors discriminate between acute and a chronic form 

 of glanders. From a practical standpoint such a distinction is perfectly 

 admissible, but to separate acute and chronic glanders as two diiierent 

 diseases, as has been done by some (French) authors, must lead, and 

 lias led, to very dangerous mistakes and to great confusion. Every 

 form of glandei'S, as I have said before, is naturally — co ipso — more or 

 less chronic in its course, but may become acute, either from the hrst 

 beginning or at any stage of its development, and sometimes very sud- 

 denly, under any of the following conditions: 



1. If a complication takes place either with one of the other forms of 

 glanders or with another disease or disorder. Sometimes even a small 



