THE MIASM OF TllK STABLE. '21-^ 



for the masterly and persevering manner in which he discovered 

 and exposed this fomes of infection, and for never, after his dis- 

 covery of it, leaving it — so far, at least, as the cavalry and ordnance 

 stables were concerned — until he had cleansed it out from the very 

 bottom, and, in the place of a heated and polluted atmosphere, filled 

 the public stables Avith currents of cool and pure air — with air that 

 was wholesome for the horses to breathe, in the place of that which 

 was pregnant with miasmatic vapours : continually charged, as the 

 unrenewed atmosphere of the closed-up stable must have been, 

 even in the daytime, but especially by night, with carbonaceous 

 exhalations from the lungs of its inhabitants, and animoniacal and 

 other noxious effluvia from the urine, the dung, and the perspira- 

 tion. To neutralize or expel this miasm constituted Coleman's 

 jyrinciple of ventilation ; — this was the object he ever and always 

 had in view. How far his plans for effecting it were judicious, 

 or the best that could, under the circumstances, have been devised, 

 is quite another question : that, in general, they proved successful, 

 is in a measure shewn in the comparative infrequency of glanders 

 and farcy at the present day. I say, in a measure, because we 

 have had no reason to take it for granted that contagion had no, 

 or even comparatively small, influence : whatever share it might 

 have had, however, in the causation, it is not likely that Coleman, 

 intent as his mind ever was upon his favourite theory of stable 

 " poison," would have heeded it. 



To my mind, however, Coleman's own reasoning on the modus 

 infectandi of this poison is in every way sufficient to prove that 

 the disease, once generated, is capable of spreading by contagion, 

 and through the medium of the air, too, from one horse to another. 

 If the atmosphere of the stable, charged as we know it to be with 

 humidity, can carry a miasm from the excretions and secretions 

 into the nose of the horse, sufficiently concentrated to produce 

 glanders and farcy, is there any good reason why the same atmo- 

 sphere may not convey the virus of glanders itself, emanating from 



ing together of the horses in small, low-pitched, ill-ventilated, dark, damp 

 stables ; and finds great fault — not without reason — with the authorities for 

 not affording proper and healthful acconmiodation. — Veterinarian for 1836. 



