DISEASES- OF THE HORSE. 533 



tary n large body of veterinarians and medical men protested against 

 the contagious character of this disease, and prevailed by their opinion 

 to such an extent against the common opinion that several of the gov- 

 ernments of Europe undertook a series of experiments to determine 

 the right between the contesting parties. 



At the veterinary school at Alfort, and at the farm of Lamirault in 

 France, several hundred horses which had passed examination as sound 

 had placed among them glandered horses under various conditions. 

 The results of these experiments proved conclusively the contagious 

 character of the disease. 



In 1881 Professor Bouchard, of the faculty of medicine in Paris, 

 assisted bj" Drs. Capitan and Charrin, undertook a series of experiments 

 with matter taken from the farcy ulcer of a human being. They after- 

 ward continued their experiments with matter taken from horses and 

 succeeded in showing in 1883 that glanders is caused by a bacterium 

 which is capable of propagation and reproduction of others of its own 

 kind if placed in the proper media. In 1882 the specific germ of 

 glanders was first discovered and described by Loeffler and Schuetz in 

 German}". 



When we come to study the eliology of glanders, the difference of 

 suscoptibilit}' en the part of different species of animals, or even on 

 the part of individuals of the same species, and when we come to find 

 proof of the slow incubation and latent character of the disease as it 

 exists in certain individuals, we will understand how in a section of 

 countr}^ containing a number of glandered animals others can seem to 

 contract and develop the disease without having ajDparently been 

 exposed to contagion. 



Causes. — The contagious nature of glanders, in no matter what 

 form it appears, being to-day definitely demonstrated, we can recog- 

 nize but one cau^e for all cases, and that is contagion hy means of the 

 specific virus of the disease. 



In studjang the writings of the older authors on glanders, and the 

 works of those authors who contested the contagious nature of the 

 disease, we find a large number of predisj)osing causes assigned as fac- 

 tors in the development of the malad3\ 



While a virus from a case of glanders if inoculated into an animal of 

 the genus Equus will inevitably produce the disease, we find a vast 

 difference in the contagious activity" of different cases of glanders. We 

 find a great variation in the manner and rapidity of the development 

 of the disease in different individuals and that the contagion is much 

 more apt to be carried to sound anim.als under certain circumstances 

 than it is under others. Onl}^ certain species of animals are suscepti- 

 ble of contracting the disease, and while some of these contract it as 

 a general constitutional malad}", in others it only develops as a local 

 sore. 



In acute glanders the contagion is found in its most virulent form. 



