546 DISEASES OF THE HORSE. 



in Mexico until carried there during the jSIexican War by the badly 

 diseased horses of the United States Army. During the hrst half of 

 the last century a large body t)f veterinarians and medical men 

 protested against the contagious character of the disease, and by 

 their opinion prevailed to such an extent against the common opinion 

 that several of the Governments of Europe undertook a series of 

 experiments to determine the right between the contesting parties. 



At the veterinary school at Alfort and at the farm of Lamirault 

 in France several hundred horses which had passed examination as 

 sound had placed among them glandered horses under various condi- 

 tions. The results of these experiments proved conclusively the con- 

 tagious character of the disease. 



In 1881 Bouchard, of the faculty of medicine in Paris, assisted 

 by Capitan and Charrin, undertook a series of experiments with 

 matter taken from the farcy ulcer of a human being. They after- 

 wards continued their experiments with matter taken from horses, 

 and in 1883 succeeded in showing that glanders is caused by a 

 bacterium which is capable of propagation and reproduction of 

 others of its own kind if placed in the proper media. In 1882 the 

 specific germ of glanders was fii-st discovered and described by 

 Loeffler and Schuetz in Germany. 



"When we come to study the etiology of glanders, the difference of 

 susceptibility on the part of different species of animals, or even on 

 the part of individuals of the same species, and when w^e come to find 

 proof of the slow incubation and latent character of the disease as 

 it exists in certain individuals, we understand how in a section of 

 country containing a number of glandered animals others can seenv to 

 contract and develop the disease without having apparently been 

 exposed to contagion. 



Causes. — The contagious nature of glanders, in no matter what 

 form it appears, being to-day definitely demonstrated, we can recog- 

 nize but one cause for all cases, and that is contagion by means of 

 the specific virus of the disease. The causative organism is known as 

 the Bacillus mallei. 



In studying the writings of the older authors on glanders, and the 

 works of those authors who contested the contagious nature of the 

 disease, we find a large number of predisposing causes assigned as 

 factors in the develoj^ment of the malady. 



Yv^hile a virus from a case of glanders if inoculated into an animal 

 of the genus Equus will inevitably produce the disease, we find a vast 

 difference in the contagious activity of different cases of glandei*s. 

 We find a great variation in the manner and rapidity of the develop- 

 ment of the disease in different individuals and that the contagion is 

 much more liable to be carried to sound animals under certain circum- 

 stances than it is under others. Only certain species of animals are 



