CONTAGIOUS BLOOD DISEASES. 



449 



comfortable condition for one to three or four years, though sowing the 

 seeds of contagion for other horses to gather all the time, thus doing an 

 inestimable amount of harm. 



When the disease breaks out, it does so by ulceration of the tissues 

 involved. These ulcers differ from ordinary ones, by their resistance to 

 treatment; if made to heal, they break out again either in the same or 

 another place, and have a tendency to spread and slough, eating away the 

 tissues till the ulcers become confluent and the Scluieiderion membrane 

 (lining of the nose) is destroyed. The disease was known in the earliest 

 times, and was written on by Vegetius, Rouan, and many others; but it 

 was not well understood as to its actual seat till La Fosse discovered that 

 it lay in inflammation and ulceration of the nasal membrane. The poison 

 of glanders and farcy is communicable to men, goats, sheep and dogs, with 

 all the characteristic symptoms of the disease in horses, and is contagious 

 from man back to the horse or ass. 



Causes. — It is due to the germ called baccilus mallei, discovered by 

 Lofller and Schutz in 1882, which exists in all of the purulent discharges. 

 It is usually propagated, fostered and extended by contagion through the 

 villainous traffic carried on in glandered horses by unscrupulous dealers. 

 For many diseased animals retain the appearance of health sufficiently well 



to be bought and sold many 

 times, the dealei-s explaining 

 the discharge from the nose as 

 coming from a cold, and the 

 swollen legs as resulting from 

 impurities in the blood; and 

 Tom, Dick and Harry, think- 

 ing they "know all about a 

 horse," buy the animals, be- 

 lieving the explanation of the 

 dealer to be true; and thus 

 thousands of dollars worth of 

 stock is ruined each year by 

 the spread of this fatal disea.se. 

 But the disease sometimes 

 arises spontaneously in armies, 

 on ship-board, or in overcrowd- 

 ed, low, damp, badly-ventilated 

 stables. Overcrowding is the 

 chief cause of its spontaneous appearance, the horses, asses or mules being 

 compelled to breathe over and over again, air vitiated by the emanations 

 from their own f cecal matter and from their bodies, and which has been ex- 

 hausted of its oxygen by passing through the lungs a number of times. 



BAD CAiJE OF GLANDEKS. 



