GLANDERS. 211 



and tlici'cfore, when it appears, it is attributed to other causes or to after 

 inoculation. No glandered horse should be employed on any farm, nor 

 should a glandered horse be permitted to work on any road, or even to 

 pasture on any field. Mischief may be so easily and extensively effected, 

 that the public interest demands that every infected animal should be 

 summarily destroyed, or given over for experiment to a veterinary surgeon, 

 or recognised veterinaiy establishment. 



There are a few instances of the s^Dontaneous cure of chronic glanders. 

 The discharge has existed for a considerable time. At length it has 

 gradually diminished, and has ceased ; and this has occurred under every 

 kind of treatment, and mthout any medical treatment : but in the majority 

 of these supposed cases, the matter was only pent up for a while, and then, 

 biirsting from its confinement, it flowed again in double quantity : or, if 

 glanders has not reappeared, the horse, in eighteen or twenty-four 

 months, has become farcied, or consumptive, and died. These supposed 

 cures are few and far between, and are to be regarded with much suspicion. 



As for medicine, there is scarcely a drug to which a fair trial has not 

 been given, and many of them have had a temporary reputation ; but they 

 have passed away, one after the other, and are no longer heard of. The 

 blue vitriol and the Spanish-fly have held out longest ; and in a few cases, 

 either nature or these medicines have done Avonders, but in the majority 

 of instances they have palpably failed. The diniodide of copper has lately 

 acquired some reputation. It has been of great serA^ice in cases of farcy, 

 but is not to be depended upon in glanders. 



Wliere the life of a valuable animal is at stake, and the owner adopts 

 every precaution to prevent infection, he may subject the horse to medical 

 treatment ; but every humane man will indignantly object to the slitting 

 of the nostril, and the scraping of the cartilage, and searing of the gland, 

 and firing of the frontal and nasal bones, and to those injections of mustard 

 and capsicum, corrosive sublimate and vitriol, by which the horse has been 

 tortured, and the practitioner disgraced. At the veterinary school, and by 

 veterinary siirgeons, it wdll be most desirable that every experiment should 

 be tried to discover a remedy for this pest ; but, in ordinary instances, he 

 is not faithful to his own interest or that of his neighbours who does not 

 remove the possibility of danger in the most summary way. 



If, however, remedial measures are resorted to, a pure atmosphere is 

 that which should first be tried. Glanders is the peculiar disease of the 

 stabled horse, and the preparation for, or the foundation of, a cure must 

 consist in the perfect removal of every exciting cause of the malady. The 

 horse must breathe a cool and pui'e atmosphere, and he must be turned 

 out, or placed in a situation equivalent to it. 



A salt marsh is, above all others, the sitiiation for this experiment ; Init 

 there is much caution required. 'No sound horse must be in the same 

 pasture, or a neighbouring one. The palings or the gates may receive a 

 portion of the matter, which may harden upon them, and, many a month 

 afterwards, be a soui'ce of mischief — nay, the viras may cling aboiit the 

 very herbage and empoison it. Cattle and sheep should not be trusted 

 with a glandered horse, for the experiments are not sufficiently numerous 

 or decided as to the exemption of these animals from the contagion of 

 glanders. 



Supposing that glanders has made its appearance in the stables of a 

 farmer, is there any danger after he has removed or destroyed the infected 

 horse ? — Certainly there is, but not to the extent that is commonly 

 supposed. There is no necessity for pulling down the racks and man- 

 gers, or even the stable itself, as some have done. The poison resides 

 not in tlie breath of the animal, but in tlie nasal discharge, and that can 



