GLANDERS AXD FARCY. 269 



The veterinarians of Belgium, too, became infected -svitli tlie French or 

 rather Alfort confusion, otherwise they never would have stated in their 

 official reports (Bulletiii du conseil superieur (Tagriculture da royaume de 

 Bclgique Arnic, lSo8, Eruxelles, 18G0), that of 810 giandered horses, 13G 

 had been cm-ed. The A'eterinary school of I^yons, France, has always 

 kept aloof from the errors of the Alfort institution in regard to glanders, 

 and has never denied the contagiousness of that disease. 



The German veterinarians, though diflering at times considerably in 

 opinion as to the nature of glanders, have n -iver doubted its contagious- 

 ness ; and German governments have always been very strict in taking 

 the most elicctive measiu"es against the spreading of that terrible enemy 

 of the equine race by requiring a prompt destruction of every horse re- 

 ported by a A'eteriuary surgeon as being aifected with the disease. As 

 a consequence, glanders has become a rare disease in Germany, and 

 the annual losses are very insignificant. 



Most of the older German veterinarians looked upon glanders as a 

 dyscratic disease. Some believed they had found the immediate cause 

 in a qualitative change of the animal albimien ; others, in a morbid in- 

 crease of fibrin. As to the morbid changes, some thought they had dis- 

 covered something characteristic in a stagnation of lymph in the lym- 

 phatics, others in a formation of tubercles, and still others considered 

 glanders as a product of scrofulosis. A few went even so far as to hold 

 glanders to be identical with tuberculosis and scrofidosis. The tuber- 

 culosis doctrine originated in France, and gained a good many adherents 

 wilUng to look upon glanders as an equine tuberculosis. The scrofu- 

 losis doctrine was based uj)on the erroneous supposition that glanders 

 proceeds or develops from strangles or distemper, and that the latter 

 is a scrofulous disease. Erdt (in his Rotzdyscrasie und Hire verwand- 

 ten KranMeiten) declared glanders, as recently as 1863, to be a dyscratic 

 disease, and discriminated a scrofulosis, blennorrhoeic, septicamic, 

 carcinomatous, s.n^bylitic, and other forms of glanders, but considered 

 scrofulosis glanders as the generic form. Professor Gerlach, in his 

 valuable treatise from which several of the notes just given have been 

 taken, refutes the theories of Erdt by the following statement, for the 

 correctness of which I can vouch Irom my own knowledge of the facts : 



The breed of the milk-white (Avhitc-bom) horses of the royal stables of the late 

 Kings of Hauover was kept pure by coutinuous in-and-iu breeding. As a conscfiueiice 

 more than half of the number of eolts bom perished every year of scrofulous diseases. 

 At the ))08t-])iortcm examinations the mesenterial glands presented every stage of scrof- 

 ulosis from siniple swelling to a cheesy degeneration. Still, never a case of gland- 

 ers occurred, neither among the colts nor among the grown horses. This proves that 

 scrofulosis really makes its appearance in colts in exactly the same form as in chil- 

 dren, and it is therefore not justiliublo to attribute an entirely ditl'erent disease of 

 horses to scrofulosis. 



For our presentbetter knowledge of the nature and the morbid anatomy 

 of glanders we are indebted especially to the thorough, unbiased, and sci- 

 entific researches and investigations of Professors Yirchow {Hand- 

 huch der Hpeciellcn Fatlcolofiic, Bd. 2, and JJic l-ranlhafteii Geschwuclste^ 

 Ed. 2) ; Leisering {Bcricht ucber das Yetcnnairicescn im Kocnigrcich 

 Sachscn, 1SG2 tind 18G7) ; Ea\itsch ( Virchoiv'n ArcJiir, Bd. 23); Polofi", 

 (Magazin von Gurlt und llcrtwig Bd. 30), and Gerlach {Jaliyc.sbcricht der 

 Koenlgl. ThierarzneiscJtulc zu Hannover, 18G8). 



THE MORBID PROCESS. 



Glanders commences as a neoplastic process — new morbid formations 

 (glanders-cells) are produced. The mucous membrane of the respk-a- 



