302 NATURE OF GLANDERS. 



One of the strongest advocates for the doctrine we are now pro- 

 pounding was Coleman ; and yet, towards the latter part of his pro- 

 fessional career, in consequence of some experiments he had recently 

 made, did Coleman at times suffer himself to doubt whether there 

 absolutely was such a thing as the virus or poison of glanders, or 

 rather, whether its presence was absolutely necessary to the pro- 

 duction of the disease. I am led to say thus much from minutes* 

 made by myself of a conversation I had with the late Professor so 

 long ago as June 1824, in the course of which he informed me, that 

 he had produced discharge from, and ulceration of, the Schneiderian 

 membrane, and all the symptoms, in fact, of glanders, simply by 

 throwing muriatic acid gas (chlorine) into the frontal sinuses. But 

 this was no more than Lafosse had done, and afterwards had ad- 

 duced as a strong argument to prove the correctness of his doctrine 

 of the locality of glanders, and its consequent curability by topical 

 means, and never to my mind can bring conviction that inflamma- 

 tion and ulceration of the aerial membrane, brought on by common 

 causes, is identical with glanders. As well might we say that 

 a carious tooth or a diseased maxillary bone or a violent catarrh 

 constituted glanders. Unless we associate with our notions of the 

 nature of glanders, the existence, demonstrable or imaginary, of 

 a poison or virus, the term specific is no longer applicable to the 

 disease, and any case may bear the denomination that happens to 

 shew fetid or gluey discharge from the nose and ulceration of the 

 nasal membrane, whether there exist lymphatic disease or not; 

 though, as I have in another place observed, should the lymphatic 

 vessels and their glands prove to be in a state of disease, the pro- 

 bability — dare we say, certainty — is, that the case is glanders and 

 farcy ; and for this reason, that lymphatic disease, at least of the 

 same character, arises in the horse from no other source of irri- 

 tation. 



* The opinions broached by the late Professor appeared on this occasion 

 so strangely at variance with what I had always conceived to be his pathology 

 of glanders, that I could not resist the impulse I had at the moment to make 

 a memorandum of the conversation ; and it is to this my present observations 

 have reference. 



