FARCY. ISl 



dangerous as the matter of glanders. While they remain in their hard prominent 

 state, they are called buttons or farcy buds ; and they are connected together by the 

 inflamed and corded veins. 



In some cases the horse will droop for many a day before the appearance of the 

 corded veins or buds — his appetite will be impaired — his coat will stare — he will lose 

 flesh. The poison is evidently at work, but has not gained sufficient power to cause 

 the absorbents to enlarge. In a few cases these buds do not ulcerate, but become 

 hard and diflicult to disperse. The progress of the disease is then suspended, and 

 possibly for some mouths the horse will appear to be restored to health ; but he 

 bears tlie seeds of the malady about him, and in due time the farcy assumes its 

 virulent form, and hurries him off. These buds have sometimes been confounded 

 with the little tumours or lumps termed surfeit. They are generally higher than 

 these tumours, and not so broad. They have a more knotty character, and are prin- 

 cipally found on the inside of the limbs, instead of the outside. 



Few things are more unlike, or more perplexing, than the different forms which 

 farcy assumes at different times. One of the legs, and particularly one of the hinder 

 legs, will suddenly swell to an enormous size. At night the horse will appear to be 

 perfectly well, and in the morning one leg will be three times the size of the other, 

 with considerable fever, and scarcely the power of moving the Yimh. 



At other times the head will be subject to this enlargement, the muzzle particularly 

 will swell, and an offensive discharge will proceed from the nose. Sometimes the 

 horse will gradually lose flesh and strength; he will be hide-bound ; many eruptions 

 will appear in different parts; the legs will swell; cracks will be seen. at the heels, 

 and an inexperienced person may conceive it to be a mere want of condition, com- 

 bined with grease. 



By degrees the affection becomes general. The virus has reached the termination 

 of the absorbents, and mingles with the general circulating fluid, and is conveyed 

 with the blood to every ])art of ihe frame. There are no longer any valves to impede 

 its progress, and consequently no knots or buds, but the myriads of capillary absorbents 

 that penetrate every part become inflamed, and thickened, and enlarged, and cease to 

 discharge their function. Hence arises enlargement of the substance of various parts, 

 swellings of the legs, and chest, and head — sudden, painful, enormous, and dis- 

 tinguished by a heat and tenderness, which do not accompany other enlargements. 



It is a question somewhat diflScult to answer, whether farcy can exist without 

 previous glanders. Probably it cannot. There is the long-continued insidious pro- 

 gress of glanders — the time which may elapse, and often does, before the owner is 

 aware or the veterinary surgeon sure of it — the possibility that minute ulceration may 

 have for a long while existed in some of the recesses of the nose — or that the slight 

 discharije, undreaded and unrecognised, yet vitiated, poisoned, and capable of com- 

 municating the disease, may have been long travelling through the frame and affecting 

 the absorber^s, and preparing for the sudden display of tarcy. 



One thino-, however, is undeniable, that farcy does not long and extensively prevail 

 without being accompanied by glanders — that even in the mild stages of farcy, 

 glanders may be seen if looked for. and that it never destroys the animal without 

 plainly associating itself with glanders. They are, in fact, stages of the same 

 disease. 



Glanders is inflammation of the membrane of the nose, producing an altered and 

 poisonous secretion, and when sufficient of this vitiated secretion has been taken up 

 to produce inflammation and ulceration of the absorbents, farcy is established. Its 

 progress is occasionally very capricious, continuing in a few cases for months and 

 years, the vigour of the horse remaining unimpaired ; and, at other times, runnin;^ 

 on to its fatal termination with a rapidity perfectly astonishiiiff. 



Farcy has been confounded with other diseases; but he must be careless or io-norant 

 who mistook sprain for it. The inflammation is too circumscribed and t'^n plainly 

 connected with the joint or the tendon. 



It may be readily distinsjuished from grease or swelled loijs. In cfrease there is 

 usually so^ne crack or scurfiness, a peculiar tenseness and redness and glossiness of 

 the skin, some ichorous discharge, and a singular spasmodic catchingf up of the leg. 



In farcy the engorgement is even more sudden than that of grease. The horse is 

 12* ° " s 



