CHAPTER XIV. 

 CONTAGIOUS BLOOD DISEASES. 



I. GLANDERS AND FARCY. II. STRANGLES. III. RABIES OR HYDROPHO- 

 BIA. IV. HORSE rOX OR EQUINE VARIOLA. V. SURRA. VI. MY- 

 COTIC LYMPHANGITIS, OR JAPANESE FARCY, 



Diseases are said to be contagious when they reproduce themselves in 

 a healthy animal, either by inoculation and absorption of the virus into 

 the system through a wound or mucous membrane, or by absorption of 

 disease o-erras floatins: in the air or in the water that the animal drinks. 



I. Glanders and Farcy. 



These are different forms of the same disease, which is a specific poison 

 that affects the whole system. When it breaks out in the nose, affecting 

 also the lungs and lymphatic glands between the branches of the lower 

 jaw, it constitutes glanders ; when it attacks the lymphatic glands and 

 other tissues of the legs and body, it constitutes farcy. The two forms 

 of disease often exist separately, but usually symptoms of both will be 

 found in the same case. The contagion lies in the discharges from tlie 

 ulcers, either those in the nose or farcy buds ; it is contagious only by 

 inoculation, the poison being of heavy specific gravity and not volatile. 

 The virus from glanders may produce glanders or farcy, or both ; the 

 virus from farcy may do the same. The mode of inoculation is usually 

 through the nose or mouth, by the introduction of the virus taken by one 

 horse working in double harness with a glandered horse, or standing in 

 the same stall, rubbing his nose on a hitching post or fence or edge of a 

 water trough where a glandered horse has stood. These latter are com- 

 mon channels through which glanders is got ; for when a glandered horse 

 is driven up to a post or water trough, the first thing he does is to rub 

 the accumulatious of matter off bis nose, the clogging of which is uncom- 

 fortable. And so great is the vitality of tlie virus, that a horse coming 

 along an hour, a day, a week, or even a year after, and happening to rub 

 his nose on the same place gets the disease by inoculation. 



The poison may lie latent in the system a week, or a month, or two 

 months and then break out, perhaps violently, and run the acute course* 

 causing death in three to six weeks ; or the disease may appear in a very 

 mild form and run the chronic course, so that the horse may live in very 



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