346 THERAPEUTIC TREATMENT OF FARCY, 



get a cutaneous sore to heal than one having for its bed secreting 

 structure ; how much more disposed the latter is to spread, to be- 

 come what surgeons call phagedcenic, than the former. Further- 

 more, should an ulcer in the skin acquire any unhealthy action or 

 aspect, we can correct its morbid tendency by destroying its sur- 

 face either by some escharotic application or by the actual cautery, 

 and by such means create in its place a healthy granulating sur- 

 face ; but, should an ulcer deep-seated within the recesses of the 

 nose take to chancrous spreading, in the first place how can we 

 obtain any knowledge of its existence save through the quantity 

 ^or quality of the nasal discharges'? — and in the second, how are we 

 to become acquainted with its exact situation? — and supposing this 

 were possible, how are we to be sure of conveying our dressings 

 upon it] The very circumstance of its concealment within the 

 convolutions of the nasal meatus, clogged and obstructed as those 

 passages often are by the collected inspissated discharges, must be 

 adverse to its healing ; since in the skin we always find ulcers do 

 the best whose surfaces are left exposed to the influence of the air. 

 Mr. Youatt's pen, I find, many years ago, was engaged in solving 

 the same question ; and as this gentleman's solution differs some- 

 what from mine, I shall make no apology for introducing it here: — 

 "Glanders," says this author, "a simply local complaint, bids 

 defiance to all our means and appliances ; yet when the virus has 

 spread through the frame, and affected the greater part or the 

 whole of the absorbent system, it is occasionally manageable. It 

 is the very fact of its spreading that enables us to account for this. 

 When it (the disease) is simply local, all its virulence is concen- 

 trated on one small surface, and no medicine can be brought to 

 bear with sufficient power on the plague-spot; but, when it begins 

 to spread, and before the tissues which it now involves are too 

 much injured and disorganized by its poison, its intensity is dimi- 

 nished. As inflammation of almost every character becomes dif- 

 fused, it less powerfully affects the individual portions over which 

 it spreads ; it is diluted — lowered ; and now, as it becomes in 

 some degree constitutional, it may be attacked with greater hope 

 of success*." 



* Mr, Yoviatt's "Lectures." — The Vetkrinarian for 1832, 



