298 NATURE 01' GLANDERS. 



whom, indeed, have been eye-witnesses of it ; and that the results 

 have proved such as to leave no room for doubt concerning the 

 morbid or infected condition of the blood, can be indisputably at- 

 tested. If there be in existence any records or detailed accounts 

 of the experiments, they are unknown to me. For my own part, I 

 regret there should exist none. I have, however, always under- 

 stood that the (healthy) subject into which the blood has been 

 transfused has commonly been an ass, previously prepared for the 

 influx by blood-letting, and that the blood transfused was derived 

 from the carotid of the glandered horse, through a stop-cock in- 

 serted and fastened into the vessel, to the opposite extremity of 

 which was affixed an ureter ; a kind of tube found to answer ex- 

 tremely well as the medium of communication between the stop- 

 cock in the carotid of the horse and another stop-cock fixed into 

 the jugular vein of the ass. The current of blood being turned on, 

 was allowed to flow until such time as revivification of the ass, 

 asphyxiated from previous loss of blood, had become established. 

 And the uniform result — whenever the ass survived the operation, 

 for, now and then, as happened to myself in an experiment of the 

 kind I made years ago, the ass died either under it or in consequence 

 of it — I repeat, the uniform result was, the eruption of glanders or 

 farcy, or both, in the ass, after a very short space of time, and in 

 so virulent and malignant a form as to destroy the hfe of the animal 

 (through suffocation) in the course of a very few days afterwards*. 

 Transfusion, as was very properly remarked by Coleman, fur- 

 nished a sufficient dose of blood for the production of the disease, 

 and seemed completely to overturn John Hunter's notion, that the 

 blood could not be diseased since inoculation with it proved harnnu- 

 lesst : indeed, this important experiment brought to light two facts 

 of immense value to pathologists; one being, that the mass of 

 blood could harbour and transmit disease ; the other, that one of 

 the diseases so harboured and thus capable of transmission was 

 glanders and farcy. 



* In the absence of any record of this truly interesting and important ex- 

 periment, this is the best account, from memory, I can give my readers. 



t See the Professor's own ingenious and convincing arguments on this 

 point at page 261. 



