300 NATURE Oi'' GLANDERS. 



State* ;" resting bis opinion upon the circumstance of the horse 

 enjoying his health. If, however, as others and myself have ob- 

 served, glanders commences with that disturbance of the health 

 which indicates — as appears natural to suppose it does — contami- 

 nation of the system, the same as the febrile commotion perceptible 

 after inoculation for small-pox or after vaccination affords a test 

 to the surgeon that the constitution has felt the inoculation in con- 

 sequence of the absorption of the virus applied locally, then it 

 seems natural to infer that glanders from that time becomes a con- 

 stitutional disease, although, like syphilis or scrofula, it may re- 

 main long lurking in the constitution without coming into se- 

 condary or destructive action, or even interfering with the ordinary 

 vital operations. Another argument against glanders being a local 

 disease is the general inefficacy of all topical measures employed 

 for its cure : had it consisted simply in inflammation or ulceration 

 of the Schneiderian membrane, Lafosse and others, with their de- 

 tersive and healing injections and fumigations, must, most assuredly,' 

 have been more successful in their practice than we know them to 

 have been. How it happens that a disease, constitutional from its 

 beginning, should assume all the characters of a local malady for a 

 longer or shorter period of time, and then all at once, as it were, 

 re-assume the constitutional form, and that of a far worse character 

 than before, we do not pretend to be able to give any explanation 

 of, further than such as is afforded by comparison with those dis- 

 eases of the human subject which have heretofore been adduced by 

 way of analogy. But that so stands the fact is sufficiently proved 

 by Coleman's experiment of transfusion, supposing that the sub- 

 ject from whom the blood was drawn — which we believe to be the 

 case — shewed no more tha^n the ordinary glandered — apparently 

 healthful — condition. 



That the Poison of Glanders, after its absorption, may be 

 latent or inactive in the system for weeks — months even — the same 

 as the virus of syphilis is known on occasions to be, and as that of 

 rabies always is — to me is satisfactorily shewn by the case of 

 C 21 horset. Whereabouts was the virus lurking during the 



* Mr. Youatt's Lectures in The Veterinarian for 1832. 



t Given at page 233. Sec, also, the same question discusyed at pages 236-7. 



