324 PROPHYLACTIC TREAMEINT. 



Where, however, in our own days — thanks to the general diffu- 

 sion and utiUty of the prophylactics we are about to mention — ■ 

 are we to look for such disgusting pitiable scenes as these ] — ■ 

 nay, now-a-days, it is hard to know sometimes where to go to 

 obtain glanderous matter for the purposes of experiment. Let us 

 but for a moment pause to consider what the losses of large coach 

 and post and job establishments, breweries and coal-yards, used to 

 amount to annually through glanders and farcy, and compare those 

 accounts with their present casualties from the same causes ! — or 

 Jet us turn over the horse statistics of our cavalry or ordnance ! 

 Frightful, to our own knowledge, have been such losses in our 

 public departments ; as nothing, compared with what they formerly 

 were, are the same casualties at the present day. 



That the principal excitants of glanders and farcy are contagion 

 and the miasm of the stable, appear among veterinarians of our 

 own day to be pretty universally admitted, other causes being 

 but occasional or incidental. Coleman, indeed, shut contagion all 

 but out from his causative agents, ascribing all the mischief to " the 

 poisoned atmosphere of the stable." He presumed the virus or 

 poison of glanders to be " bred" as well as " diffused in an atmo- 

 sphere rendered impure by repeated respiration and by effluvia 

 from the dung, urine, and perspiration." A confined atmosphere 

 in a foul stable being \\\efomes of the miasm or contagion, the 

 remedy for prevention became evident. It was not sufficient for a 

 stable to be drained and kept clean ; it was necessary that there 

 should be a continual change of its atmosphere kept up — that the 

 air which its inhabitants had once breathed, and which had become 

 heated and carbonized, should not enter their lungs a second time. 

 This was Coleman's principle of proceeding in his prophylactic mea- 

 sures — this reasoning it was, supported by a host of facts, that 

 laid the foundation of his grand scheme of ventilation j and the 

 records both of our cavalry and ordnance will triumphantly shew 

 how successful the scheme has proved, to say nothing about the 

 benefit private studs and establishments have derived from having,, 

 late though many of them did have, recourse to the same. Cole- 

 man's plan of ventilation was to make apertures in the roofs of 

 stables, or in the most elevated parts, and especially in the corners, 



