318 



SEAT AND NATURE OF FARCY. 



Farcy may be said to have its seat in the skin, that of glanders 

 being accounted to be the aerial membrane. In strict pathology, 

 glanders and farcy together constitute one and the same disease of 

 the lymphatic vessels and their glands : the disease originates in 

 these vessels, and for a time confines itself to them ; in the course 

 of its progress, however, it extends into the contiguous tissues, 

 affecting in one case the cutis vera, in the other the mucous lining 

 of the air-passages, and it is in these parts respectively that the 

 phenomena of farcy and glanders are exhibited. No wonder, 

 therefore, that the appearances in farcy — the local symptoms — ■ 

 should differ so much as they do from those of glanders, and that 

 the buds and ulcerations of the one should be found, in the course 

 of treatment, so much more manageable or more " curable" than 

 those of the other form of disease ; or that one disease should be 

 so much more dangerous to the animal affected, as well as to horses 

 (in health) around him, than the other. Inflammation in the cutis 

 is a different disease from inflammation in a mucous membrane- • 

 productive of different phenomena, and requiring a different (local) 

 treatment: hence the apparently wide differences between two 

 diseases essentially or in nature alike. 



In general, in dissecting farcied limbs or other parts, as soon as 

 we have cut through the thickened and indurated skin, we appear 

 to have bottomed the disease — to have reached its depth or pro- 

 foundest seat : the subcutaneous tissue everywhere around is in- 

 filtrated, apparently in a state of local dropsy, but of the farcinous 

 disease the skin has manifestly borne the brunt. In cases, how- 

 ever, of inveterate or malignant farcy, in which the deep-seated as 

 well as the superficial order of lymphatics have taken on disease, 

 Ave meet with farcy-buds and pustules, and occasionally with ab- 

 scesses of large and irregular dimensions, situated among the 

 muscles. 



Dupuy informs us he has met with ''tubercles" (or farcy-buds) 

 and farcy-pustules upon the mucous lining of the alimentary canal ; 

 and Leblanc, so far as having witnessed one case of the kind, 



