298 NATURE OF GLANDERS. 



healthy conditions of body, as is Mr. Vines' opinion, we certainly 

 ought to have cases of farcy and glanders, or cases analogous 

 thereto, a great deal oftener than we now see them. But, if we 

 suppose the necessity of the presence of virus or poison of some 

 sort to produce such an effect, and recollect that this virus, should it 

 not be taken by contagion, is only seen generated in the body un- 

 der certain impure or mephitic states of atmosphere, or under cer- 

 tain infected conditions of blood, we can at once account for the 

 comparative rarity, at the present day, of glanders and farcy, and, 

 at the same time, for the efficacy of such prophylactics as have 

 been recommended and used for their prevention. We may, there- 

 fore, with truth say, not merely that glanders and farcy are a dis- 

 ease of the lymphatic system, but emphatically the disease of that 

 system ; for we know, in horses, of no other — at least, no other 

 that produces the corded, tuberculated, knotted condition of the 

 lymphatic vessels ; that condition which turns to suppuration and 

 ends in ulceration of their canals, and upon which remedies of an 

 ordinary description make little or no impression. 



From the lymphatic Vessel, in which it has its origin, 

 glanders spreads into the substance of the mucous membrane, farcy 

 into that of the cutis vera, involving both one and the other in the 

 morbid action and its consequences : the substance of the lymphatic 

 vessel, in the language of Leblanc, " becoming consumed, and 

 passing away with the secretions*." The changes the mucous 

 membrane undergoes under such circumstances have already 

 been describedt ; those the skin experiences when invaded by 

 farcy will become the subject of our consideration in another 

 place. 



Is Glanders a constitutional or a local Disease] 

 Under ordinary circumstances, I answer, a constitutional disease ; 

 and in proof of this assertion I allege, first, the febrile commotion 

 discoverable in the sj'stem ; secondly, the eruption of the disease 

 in the form of farcy, in some remote or other part of the body; 

 thirdly, the contaminated condition of the blood ; fourthly, the in- 

 efficaoy of topical remedies by way of cure. 



* Page 288 f M page 166, et sequent. 



