GLANDERS. 129 



tive, and restorative, in our whole materia medica ; and if it is accessible in the form 

 of a salt marsh, there is no better chance of doing- good. 



GLANDERS. 



The most formidable of all the diseases to which the horse is subject, is Glanders. 

 It has been recognised from the time of Hippocrates, of Cos ; and few modern veteri- 

 nary writers have given a more accurate or complete account of its symptoms, than 

 is to be found in the works of the father of medicine. Three-and-twenty hundred 

 years have rolled on since then, and veterinary practitioners are not yet agreed as to 

 the tissue primarily affected, nor the actual nature of the disease : we only know that 

 it is at the present day, what it was then, a loathsome and an incurable malady. 



We shall therefore, in treating of this disease, pursue our course slowly and 

 cautiously. 



The earliest symptom of Glanders is an increased discharge from the nostril, small 

 in quantity, constantly flowing, of an aqueous character, and a little mucus mingling 

 with it. 



Connected with this is an error too general, and highly mischievous with regard to 

 the character of this discharge in the earliest stage of the disease, when, if ever, a 

 cure might be effected, and when, too, the mischief from contagion is most frequently 



froduced. The discharge of glanders is not sticky when it may be first recognised, 

 t is an aqueous or mucous, but small and constant discharge, and is thus distinguished 

 from catarrh, or nasal gleet, or any other defluxion from the nostril. It should be 

 impressed on the mind of every horseman that this small and constant defluxion, 

 overlooked by the groom and by the owner, and too often by the veterinary surgeon, 

 is a most suspicious circumstance. 



Mr. James Turner deserves much credit for having first or chiefly directed the atten- 

 tion of horsemen to this important but disregarded symptom. If a horse is in the 

 highest condition, yet has this small aqueous constant discharge, and especially from 

 one nostril, no time should be lost in separating him from his companions. No harm 

 will be done by this, although the defluxion should not ultimately betray lurking mis- 

 chief of a worse character. 



Mr. Turner relates a case very much in point. A farmer asked his opinion respect- 

 ing a mare in excellent condition, with a sleek coat, and in full work. He had had 

 her seven or eight months, and during the whole of that time there had been a dis- 

 charge from the right nostril, but in so slight a degree as scarcely to be deemed worthy 

 of notice. He now wanted to sell her, but, like an honest man, he wished to know 

 whether he might warrant her. Mr. Turner very properly gave it as his opinion, that 

 the discharge having existed for so long a time, he would not be justified in sending 

 her into the market. A farrier, however, whose ideas of glanders had always been 

 connected with a sticky discharge and an adherent gland, bought her, and led her 

 away. 



Three months passed on, when Mr. Turner, examining the post-horses of a neigh- 

 bouring inn, discovered that two of them were glandered, and two more farcied, while, 

 standing next to the first that was attacked, and his partner in work, was his old 

 acquaintance, the farmer's mare, with the same discharge from her nostril, and who 

 had, beyond question, been the cause of all the mischief. 



The peculiar viscidity and gluiness which is generally supposed to distinguish the 

 discharge of glanders from all other mucous and prevalent secretions belongs to the 

 second stage of the disease, and, for many months before this, glanders may have 

 existed in an insidious and highly contagious form. It must be acknowledged, how- 

 ever, that, in the majority of cases, some degree of stickiness does characterise the 

 discharge of glanders from a very early period. 



It is a singular circumstance, for which no satisfactory account has yet been given, 

 that when one nostril alone is attacked, it is, in a great majority of cases, the near, or 

 left. M. Dupuy, the director of the veterinary school at Toulouse, gives a very sin- 

 gular account of this. He says, that out of eighty cases of glanders that came under 

 his notice, only one was affected in the rio-ht nostril. The difference in the affected 

 nostril does not exist to so great an extent in Great Britain ; but, in two horses out of 

 three, or tnree out of four, t!ie discharge is from the left nostril alone. We migh/, 



a 



