204 GLANDERS. 



directed the attention of hoi'semen to this important but disregarded 

 symptom. If a horse is in the highest condition, yet has this smal] 

 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 mischief 

 of a worse character. 



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

 opinion respecting a mare in excellent condition, with a sleek coat, and in 

 full work. He had had her seven or eight months, and dui-ing the whole 

 of that time there had been a discharge 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. 



Tlrree months passed on, when Mr. Turner examining the post-horses 

 of a neighbouring 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, however, 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 singular account of this. He says that, out of 

 eighty cases of glanders that came under his notice, only one was affected 

 in the right nostril. The difference iu the affected nostril does not exist 

 to so great an extent in Great Britain ; but in two horses oiit of three, or 

 three out of four, the discharge is from the left nostril alone. We might 

 account for the left leg failing oftener than the right, for we mount and 

 dismount on the left side ; the horse generally leads with it, and there is 

 more wear and tear of that limb : but we cannot satisfactorily account for 

 this usual affection of the left nostril. It is true that the reins are held in 

 the left hand, and there may be a little more bearing and pressure on the 

 left side of the mouth ; but this applies only to saddle-horses, and even 

 with them does not sufficiently explain the result. 



This discharge, in cases of contagion, may continue, and in so slight a 

 degree as to be scarcely perceptible, for many months, or even two or three 

 years, unattended by any other disease, even ulceration of the nostril, and 

 yet the horse being' decidedly glandered from the beginning and capable 

 of propagating the malady. In process of time, however, pus mingles with 

 the discharge, and then another and a characteristic symptom appears. 

 Some of this is absorbed, and the neighbouring glands become affected. 

 If there is a discharge from both nostrils, the glands within the xinder jaw 

 will be on both sides enlarged. If the discharge is from one nostril only, 

 the swelled gland will be found on that side alone. Glanders, however, will 

 frequently exist at an early age without these swelled glands, and some 



