312 DIAGNOSIS OF FARCY. 



a state of disease from farcy, as well as those of the mediastinum 

 and pelvis. I cannot, however, for my own part, recall to mind 

 any observations confirmatory of this; at the same time, I do 

 not question the statement. All that I have to say in regard to it 

 being, that when suppuration is named as having taken place in 

 the lymphatic glands, it would, in my mind, furnish an argument 

 against the disease turning out to be farcy or glanders. 



Diagnosis. — The old writers on farriery seem to have had no 

 standard whereby farcy was to be distinguished from some other 

 diseases resembling it. Any common anasarcous swelling of the 

 hind limb that proved to be general they called " watery farcy;" 

 thus evidently confounding it with that oedematous state of liuib 

 which is known to be one of the concomitants or consequences of 

 true farcy. Modern veterinarians, with their improved knowledge 

 of patholog}^ have got rid of these erroneous notions, and by shew- 

 ing that farcy is a disease of the lymphatic system, have laid the 

 foundation for a new and more orthodox hippopathology. We now 

 know that no disease can be farcy that does not affect the lymph- 

 atics ; I am not aware, however, that any veterinarian beside my- 

 self has carried his observations so far as to pronounce that farcy 

 was the only disease to which the l^'mphatic system of the horse is 

 obnoxious. And yet this, if established, is an important point, in- 

 asmuch as, then, our diagnosis becomes well defined and compara- 

 tively facile in practice. No swelling of a hind limb (or of any 

 other part) constitutes a case of farcy apart from unequivocal signs 

 of lymphatic disease: there must be present corded, nodulated 

 swellings — huds in some form or other — ^together with actual or 

 approaching tumefaction of the lymphatic glands, or the case is 

 not farcy. 



I cannot help thinking, from accounts I have perused in some 

 veterinary authors, that both glanders and farcy have been mis- 

 taken ; or rather, that diseases of another kind have been mis- 

 taken for them, and for farcy oftener than for glanders. One dis- 

 ease in particular, and one that is by no means so very rare in its 

 occurrence, I feel quite certain has been called by the name of 

 farcy, and under this appellation appears to have been '' cured," 

 and to have boon recorded as such. The disease I allude to is 



