no 



GLANDERS : HOW ACQl'IRED. STRANGLES, CAUSE OF. 



pastures rather olt>vato(l, where they will Imve sufficient norriture during the 

 period of gestation, and can find occasional shelter from the weather. "By 

 these means (says M. Dupuy) the disorder may be prevented in great mea- 

 sure." The disorder he here si)eaks of he calls "scrophulous tubercle;" to 

 which "all cattle whatever, bred in marshy situjttions with scanty allowance 

 to the parents, are very liable." This disorder of the blood or breed, accord 

 inc to M. Dupuy, "predisposes the horse to contract those diseases that arc 

 known to us under the terms strangles, bastard strangles, forcy, and defluxions 

 from the eyes ;" which latter, it will be seen, at page 127, is a corresponding 

 symptom and never failing attendant upon the vives, as it is of all other glan- 

 dular swellings about the jaws. The Frenchman thus converts a single 

 symptom into a disorder! 



In England, moreover, we do not talk or write of scrophula in horses, or a 

 disposition thereto, this being a symptom of a vitiated system in carnivorous 

 animals. For, the mange in dogs, scurvical or scrophulous eruptions in man- 

 kind, and the farcy or grease in the horse, although appearing very similar to 

 the eye of a common itbserver, and all originating in a depraved state of the 

 system; yet the immediate cause of each of these dtlfers greatly, by reason of 

 the manifest diflerence in the structure of the capillary vessels or tubes that 

 deposit the offensive matter of either kind, demand a very different treatment 

 at our hands, and we reject the anomaly of M. Dupuy as inapplicable to 

 horse-medicine. But when this gentleman represents the general predispos- 

 ing cause as a " tuberculous or fistulous affection, that is capable of being al- 

 leviated, prevented, and in some cases cured," he brings his arguments quite 

 within the range of our conceptions; and 1, for my part, take all that he sub- 

 sequently adduces, as being in perfect consonance with my own doctrine re- 

 specting the predisposing cause of diseases. As to ancestry, and breeding 

 from a good stock, in favourable situations, of which this writer appears to 

 entertain correct notions, 1 had already anticipated him, as the reader may 

 perceive at pages 18, 19, which is a part of my book that appeared in the 

 Annals of Sporting for 1822. 



THE STRANGLES. 



The Strangles, as the name imports, is first indicated by a coughing, and 

 difficulty of swallowing, as if the animal would die of strangulation. It is a 

 disorder of youth (like our hooping cough), is inherent to the nature of the 

 animal (as is our small pox) once only, and its virulence may be abated by 

 inoculation, whereby we choose a favourable period for meeting the inevitable 

 attack, after duly preparing the patient. 



Cause. — Repletion of the system of life, and the deposite of blood in the 

 glands under the jaw ; which failing to be taken up and reconveyed back 

 again into the system (called absorption — see book the first, p. 21), the glands 

 become inflamed, swell, and burst, the discharge of the offensive matter being 

 the cure. I have always considered it a critical disease, and treated it as such, 

 encouraging the formation of matter, and assisting nature in throwing off a 

 something that is evidently obnoxious to the constitution. Indeed, 1 have 

 never heard of any other practice ; the impertinent attempts at repression, so 

 frequently adopted at the request of proprietors in other cases of tumour, 

 never having extended itself to this. Strangles, strictly speaking, are inci- 

 dent to the young animal only — that is, from two years old, until five or near 

 six ; when the circulution (as the blood is called) has attained its fulnebs, and, 

 perhaps, slight cold has first detained any portion thereof in the glands,.where- 

 oy the inflammation is engendered that constitutes the disease. When these 

 ;{lands swell and discharge at a more mature age, the strangles must then hg 



