274 SEAT AND NATURE OF GLANDERS. 



excoriates the skin, clothing the doubling of the nostrils over which 

 it flows 1 The facility with which horses, standing together in the 

 same stable, catch the same catarrhal disorder, might lead us to pre- 

 sume that the discharge, at least up to a certain period, harboured 

 some contagious property. After all, these are but hints that we 

 have thrown out ; and so far are we ourselves from regarding them 

 as infallible, that now we are going to offer some further considera- 

 tions apparently of a contradictory character.'* 



" Nevertheless, before we conclude, we shall frankly give our 

 own opinion on the subject. According to our notions, glanders is 

 a disease of the pituitary membrane — an abnormal secretory irrita- 

 tation of it — either arising spontaneously or caused by contagion. 

 The idiopathic disease may be primitive or consecutive to the in- 

 ternal change, be it of the entire economy or of one of the principal 

 systems, especially the respiratory. As for the different forms or 

 modifications under which glanders appears, chronic and acute, 

 jmsttdous and ulcerative, ecchymotic and gangrenous, these are but 

 phases of endless variety, consequent on the conditions of indivi- 

 duals and on extrinsic causes^." 



Professor Sewell's opinions on glanders — as they stood at 

 least so far back as the year 1827-8 — will be found in an Intro- 

 ductory Lecture delivered by him for that sessional year, at the 

 Ruyal Veterinary College ; which was by myself taken down in 

 short hand, and afterwards published in the first volume of The 

 Veterinarian. I here transcribe them, with some slight altera- 

 tions of wording and arrangement! : — 



The Professor belieyes the lungs to be the original seat of 

 glanders, and the affection of the nose to be secondary. He 

 agrees with Dupuy in thinking that miliary tidjercles constitute the 

 original disease ; and that these suppurate, and by coalescence 

 form considerable abscesses in the lungs, the contents of which 



* Op. cit., at page 217. 



t In rcpl}' to a letter I wrote to the Professor in March 1844, submitting 

 to him the statement I now introduce here, and requesting to be informed if this 

 coincided with his present views, I received for answer — " that he (the Pro- 

 fessor) is confirmed b^ time and cxpciicnec in his opinions and views which 

 he expressed on the subject of glanders in his Introductory Lecture lor 1827-8." 



