316 CAUSES or farcy. 



into that form or stage, is certainly that which affords the best 

 prospects under treatment, or which may, even without any treat- 

 ment at all, admit of the animal doing part or all of his work ; 

 but, even here, it is injudicious to make the prognosis too sure : it 

 ought, under almost all circumstances, to be a qualified one, 



THE CAUSES OF FARCY. 



Whatever tends or operates to the production of glanders, the 

 same has the power of causing farcy. Contagion becomes no ex- 

 ception to this admitted truth, supposing its agency to be through 

 the medium of the constitution : contaminated blood is quite as 

 likely to emit its virus in the form of farcy as in that of glan- 

 ders. Coleman, however, appears to have viewed the operation of 

 contagion in glanders as being local, upon the Schneiderian mem- 

 brane; and that, to take effect, it must have a local operation also 

 in the production of farcy ; since, in his lectures, he informs us, 

 that, *' of all three affections (viz., acute and chronic glanders and 

 farcy) farcy affords the most conclusive evidence of the production 

 of the disease in the absence of contagion." Undoubtedly, it is 

 out of the range of probability — out, almost, of that of possibility — 

 for the inside of the thigh of one horse to come into contact with the 

 nose of another horse, or, iu fact, with any contagious virus, 

 through chance or accident ; supposing, however, that the conta- 

 gion enters the system before the local disease be produced, there 

 is in that case quite as much likelihood of farcy following as of 

 glanders. We know that, by inoculation, farcy has been pro- 

 duced by the matter of glanders, and glanders by the matter of 

 farcy, and that, consequently, there is every reason to infer a simi- 

 larity^, or rather an identity in the viruses of the two diseases ; and 

 in farther proof of this, as was said before, one disease, or form of 

 disease, almost invariably terminates in the other prior to dissolu- 

 tion. There can be no question but that the same contaminated or 

 miasmatic atmosphere of the stable or elsewhere which produces 

 glanders may occasion farcy ; and vice versa. The cases of the 

 four horses of my own regiment* fully bear out this conclusion : 

 * Given at page 230, et s('(|ucnt. 



