224 CAUSES OF GLANDERS. 



cious or " weaker" as the disease declines. Why should not some- 

 thing of the same kind happen in the progress of glanders or farcy"? 

 It is, indeed, asserted, and on good authority, that in the acute 

 forms or stages these diseases are more contagious than in the 

 chronic or latent forms or stages ; a fact which seems to harmonize 

 with the result of our experiment upon the ass, as well as with 

 what we have just observed in regard to the small-pox and cow- 

 pox ; those diseases being found to be most contagious when at 

 the heisfht of their natural course. 



But inoculated glanders differs strangely from inoculated diseases 

 in general — from inoculated small-pox and cow-pox, for example. 

 These disorders are rendered mild and comparatively harmless by 

 being produced in such manner*, whereas glanders, the product of 

 inoculation, commonly manifests itself with augmented virulence 

 and malignity. A horse taking glanders in the common way, 

 apparently spontaneously, may, and often does, have the disease in 

 a sub-acute or comparatively mild form ; wliereas, when we inocu- 

 late an ass for the disease, we expect no other result than, should 

 the inoculation take effect, to see it fall a prey to the ravages of 

 glanders and farcy in the very short space of time of ten or twelve 

 days ! Aware of this, we are furnished at once with a reply to 

 persons who inquire of us, why we do not inoculate horses for 

 glanders or farcy, the same as surgeons do children for small-pox 

 and cow-pox. But, supposing even that the disease were, by 

 inoculation, rendered comparatively mild, and in that mild form 

 were curable, still are we not certain that once having it would 

 prove any immunity against taking it afterwards. The fact of the 

 disease appearing in an aggravated rather than a mitigated form 

 after inoculation, also in some measure accounts for the rapid and 

 fatal course of it in those melancholy cases in which man has been 



* The effect of inoculation is to lessen the number of pustules (in small-pox) ; 

 and thus to diminish the general violence of the disease. The mortality from 

 natural small-pox used to be as much as one in six ; whereas, after inocula- 

 tion, not above one in two — say in five — hundred, dies. Dr. Fordyce said that 

 the severity of the inoculated disease was regulated by the quantity of matter 

 used in inoculation ; it is, therefore, right for us to use as little 'as possible in 

 small-pox, but in cow-pox a considerable quantity should be introduced. — 

 T)f. Jillliotnori s Lectvres. 



