236 CAUSES OF GLANDERS. 



being in such establishments any utensils of the kind to spare — 

 it seems but reasonable to infer that the wooden stable fitments, 

 the racks and mangers more particularly, were the contaminating 

 media. Admitting that they were, there arises another question : 

 viz. in what manner was the transmission made ? Shall we say 

 that glandered horses had inhabited the stables, and besmeared with 

 their discharges the mangers, &c., leaving upon their surfaces 

 desiccated matter which waited but for moisture, and especially for 

 moisture with heat, to render it active and operative again ] And 

 shall we suppose that the sound horse, who took the contagion, 

 in some way or another actually got this moistened matter conveyed 

 upon the membrane lining his nose, and so inoculated himself; or 

 that he inhaled the effluvia caused by moisture and heat to arise 

 from the desiccated besmearments, and that these effluvia^ entering 

 with the air into the animal's air-passages, therein became absorbed, 

 and thus infected his system : the contamination, therefore — mediate 

 instead of immediate — breaking out afterwards in the form of 

 glanders and farcy 1 I must confess I think this latter the more 

 feasible modus operandi of the contagious virus ; and my reasons 

 for so thinking are — first, the unlikelihood of any of the dried 

 matter obtaining admission in any consistent form into the nose; 

 secondly, the results being so different ; in one horse the contagion 

 producing farcy ; in two others, farcy succeeded by farcy-glanders; 

 in the fourth case glanders alone. 

 That the contagious Virus enters the Horse's System 



THROUGH THE AERIAL PASSAGES OR CAVITIES, we appear to 

 have, I think, very satisfactory evidence. Clothed as the animal's 

 skin everywhere is with hair, we can hardly imagine such a thing 

 as cutaneous absorption ; and in respect to the alimentary passages, 

 it has already been shewn that substances deleterious in the extreme 

 when applied to the skin, become innocuous when introduced into 

 the stomach ; and glanderous matter has repeatedly been exhibited 

 by White and others in the form of bolus without effect. The deduc- 

 tion, therefore, naturally is, that the aerial membrane is the medium 

 through which the virus of glanders becomes introduced. 



That this Virus may lie latent in the System appears 

 tolerably satisfactorily proved by the case of C 21 troop-horse. 



