CAUSES OF (i LANDERS. 21 3 



that, when the Duke of Marlborough took Lisle from the French, 

 the glanders broke out there among the horses with such virulence 

 that the stables were obliged to be shut up ; that they remained so 

 for thirty years ; but, from the circumstance of another war, they 

 were again opened, and then, from the infection having — as they 

 affirm — remained in the stables all that time, the horses that were 

 put into them became immediately glandered." Mr. Smith laughs 

 at the idea of ascribing this to contagion — the matter of which, 

 " had it been brass instead of mucus or pus, must have been 

 reduced to ashes long before the expiration of this period" — but 

 assigns the true cause to be " the want of the vivifying principle' 

 — oxygen ; whence alone, in his opinion, '' sprung all the diseases 

 which those writers asserted to be the effect of contagion." — 

 ''When the regiment — the Second Dragoon Guards — returned 

 from the continent in 1795, in consequence of contrary winds, the 

 horses were kept on board ship upwards of seven weeks, during 

 which time many of them became glandered, and others died with- 

 out any symptom of this disease. Now, as one of the ships in 

 which the disease prevailed had never been in the transport service 

 before, and consequently these were the first horses that had ever 

 been in her hold, whence did the disease proceed ? Could it have 

 arisen from the bottom of the North Sea 1 in the month of Decem- 

 ber ?" — " It was the depth of the hold in some of them, the obstruc- 

 tion of the air by the forage, &c., the removing of the wind-sails, 

 and the covering up of the hatchways, that indubitably rendered 

 the ships so extremely injurious and fatal to the horses, and pro- 

 duced effects similar, in some degree, to those too frequently ex- 

 perienced in mines and other subterraneous situations." Another 

 striking illustration is afforded by the following narrative : — 



"A stable at Longford, containing forty-two troop horses, was so constructed 

 that the air could find ingress only by the doors and windows at the two ends. 

 " This did not, however, admit a sufficiency to support such a number of horses 

 in health : both glanders and farcy consequently prevailed amongst them. 

 That the disease was positively occasioned by the absence of pure air^ the fol- 

 lowing circumstance will fully prove : — The first troop of the regiment that 

 occupied this stable entered on the 19th March, 1804, and continued in it 

 until the 23d July, during which period some of its best horses became glan- 



