234 CAUSES OF GLANDERS. 



be over scrupulous about such stables being wholesome or free 

 from infection. In addition to which it may be stated, on almost 

 public authority, that Barnet and Whetstone, having been for 

 years towns wherein large numbers of coach and post horses have 

 been kept for work on the great northern roads, many of whom 

 from time to time have turned glandered and farcied, are both 

 places that may be said to harbour the fomes of contagion. 



Connecting, then, all these correlative Facts — the non- 

 appearance of either glanders or farcy in the regiment from 1827 to 

 1833 ; its quick and sudden eruption on the return of the regiment 

 from out-quarters in three instances, and fifteen weeks afterwards in 

 a fourth, notwithstanding every horse left the Regent's Barracks 

 apparently in full health only the week before ; its disappearance 

 with that fourth case, and no return in any shape whatever of the 

 disease since 1833, up to the time I am writing, the conclusion of 

 1844 ; the airy cold stables, from want of repair, in which the 

 horses were lodged at Barnet and Whetstone, together with the 

 proverbial /omz7<?5 of those two towns for glanders and farcy ; — 

 I say, taking all these circumstances into account, I do not see to 

 what other conclusion we can reasonably come than that the 

 disease was the product of a contagion, to the influence of which 

 the horses were exposed during their sojourn at out-quarters. 

 Educated as I have been in the Coleman school, imbibing as I there 

 did notions of non-contagion, I must confess I was in the early part 

 of my life sceptical concerning the contagiousness of glanders ; not 

 doubting its possibility, but questioning its probability : the above 

 series of incidents, however, occurring as they did under my very 

 nose, have dispelled any scruples I may have had left on the latter 

 point, and in my mind established the fact, together with its likeli- 

 hood in certain situations and under certain favouring conditions 

 to become realized, beyond the reach of being shaken by any 

 arguments founded upon the present state of our knowledge of the 

 etiology of glanders. It is very natural to ask. 



How HAPPENED IT THAT 268 HORSES ESCAPED 1 even those in 

 the same stables with and standing by the very sides of them that 

 contracted the disease ] Every circumstance of regimen and work, 

 as well as habitation probably, with the bulk of them, being similar. 



