VARIETIES OF GLANDERS. 193 



Beyond any information we can glean from the symptoms, and 

 such as is to be derived from the history of the case, we have no 

 means of testing its true nature save through an operation, or by 

 inoculation of an ass (or another horse) with the discharged matter. 

 Of these tests we shall speak hereafter. 



The unaffected good Health horses having chronic 

 glanders in general enjoy, together with the condition and apparent 

 aptitude for work they maintain, it is that has given rise to a 

 fraud often successfully practised at Smithfield and other horse 

 markets, in days when glandered horses were more common in the 

 country than they are at the present time. Three knaves act in 

 confederacy. The horse, who previously has been made by some 

 sternutatory means to blow out any matter that might be lodged in 

 his nose, is by one of them led to the market for sale, where he is 

 soon sold at a price much below his apparent value, the purchaser 

 having been persuaded and urged on by a stander-by — a seeming 

 stranger — who is no other person than the second confederate. 

 Pleased with his bargain, the purchaser takes him away home- 

 ward ; but has no sooner got clear of the market than he is met 

 by another stranger — the third confederate — who happens to recog- 

 nize the horse, and who at once expresses surprise and dismay that 

 he should have bought an animal with such a foul and horrible dis- 

 ease upon him ; adding that the horse ought to be, and must be in 

 obedience to Act of Parliament, shot without delay ; and in order 

 that the purchaser may not be at any farther trouble or respon- 

 sibility, offers at the same time for a small fee to take the horse 

 of him '' at knackers' price." In this way the subject of fraud 

 finds his way back into the hands of his former possessors, and is 

 soon offered again for sale ; not perhaps in the same market, but 

 in some other part of the country. The late Captain Harvey — a 

 gentleman well known as one of the best riders in the Old Surrey 

 hunt — was cheated in this manner at Bromley Fair : in his case 

 there was no third confederate. The Captain thought he had 

 got an excellent hunter for very little money, with the trifling 

 drawback of his having " a slight cold in his head," and brought 

 him the following day to my father for his advice. The opinion 

 sought proved short and decisive ; — the horse was " glandered." 



