CONTAGION. 235 



we have no means of accounting for this dissimilarity of result, 

 save in the resort we have in the medical axiom of insuscejjtihiliiij ; 

 but in what that consists — why one horse should prove susceptible, 

 another not — we know no more than we do about the modus 

 operandi of contagion itself. Had the disorder been catarrh or 

 simple fever, the probability is, among such a number of horses 

 there would have been more cases of it : the sequel proved that it 

 was neither — that it was, in fact, no other disease from its very 

 beginning than glanders and farcy. 



Coleman, probably, would have ascribed the production of the 

 disease to the foulness or want of ventilation in the stables the 

 horses inhabited. The colonel's two horses, however, had a four- 

 stalled stable to themselves, and consequently could hardly be said 

 to be in confined air ; and the stables the troop horses occupied 

 were, for the most part, in such want of repair that air-holes were 

 more numerous than were desired ; and though the floorings were 

 in a dirty or filthy condition at the time the troops first took pos- 

 session, yet would military discipline not allow them to remain so. 

 Considering, therefore, these circumstances, and taking into account 

 the number of other instances that might be — and some of which 

 in these pages have been — adduced of the influence of contagion, 

 for my own part I think we have good reason for alleging the 

 same to have been the exciting agent on the occasion in question. 

 Presuming, then — and we think we have shewn strong reasons for 

 so doing — that 



Stabling may be the Medium of Contagion, the inquiry 

 comes before us — and an interesting one it is — whereabouts and 

 in what form the contagion presents itself, and what is required to 

 render it operative. Applying our observations especially to the 

 case of the introduction of glanders into my own regiment, there 

 appeared but two ways in which consistent virus or emanations 

 from it could have reached the nostrils of these horses ; either 

 through some part of the stable, the mangers in particular, or througli 

 the water pails, neither halters nor bridles of any kind having 

 been used save what the men took out of barracks with them. 

 And as it is probable the pails had, up to the time the men marched 

 into their quarters, been in constant use at the inns — there rarely 



