214 FARCY. 



proves, that altliougli tliey may be, and most probably are, types of one 

 and the same disease, they are not identical with each other. There is 

 the long-continued insidious progress 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 dis- 

 charge, undreaded and unrecognised, yet vitiated, poisoned, and capable 

 of communicating the disease, may have been long travelling through the 

 frame, and affecting the absorbents, and preparing for the sudden display 

 of farcy. 



One thing, however, is undeniable, that farcy does not long and ex- 

 tensively prevail without being accomparded by glanders, and that it 

 never destroys the animal without plainly associating itself with glanders. 

 They are, in fact, types 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 secre- 

 tion has been taken up to produce inflammation and ulceration of the 

 absorbents, farcy is estabhshed. Its progress is occasionally very ca- 

 pricious, continuing in a few cases for months and years, the vigour of 

 the horse remaining unimpaired ; and at other times, running on to its 

 fatal termination with a rapidity perfectly astonishing. 



Farcy has been confounded with other diseases ; but he must be careless 

 or ignorant who mistook sprain for it. The inflammation is too circum- 

 scribed and too plainly connected Avith the joint or the tendon. 



It may be readily distinguished from gTease or swelled legs. In grease 

 there is usually some crack or scurfiness, a peculiar tenseness and redness 

 and glossiness of the skin, some ichorous discharge, and a singular spas- 

 modic catching up of the leg. 



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

 The horse is well to-day, and to-morrow he is gorged from the fetlock to 

 the haunch, and although there is not the same redness or glossiness, 

 there is great tenderness, a burning heat in the limb, and much general 

 fever. It is simultaneous inflammation of all the absorbents of the limb. 



Surfeit can scarcely be confounded with farcy or glanders. It is a 

 pustular eruption — surfeit himqis, as they are called, and terminating in 

 desquamation, not in ulceration, although numerous, yet irregularly placed, 

 and never following the course of the absorbents, but scattered over the skn. 



Local dropsy of the cellular membrane, and particularly that enlargement 

 beneath the thorax which has the strange appellation of u-ater-farcij, have 

 none of the characters of real farcy. It is general debility to a greater or 

 less degree, and not inflammation of the absorbents. If properly treated, 

 it soon disappears, except that, occasionally, at the close of some serious 

 disease, it indicates a breaking up of the constitution. 



Farcy, like glanders, springs from contagion and from bad stable manage- 

 ment. It is produced by all the causes which give rise to glanders, with 

 this difference, that it is more frequently generated, and sometimes strangely 

 prevalent in particular districts. It will attack, at the same time, several 

 horses in the same ill-conducted stable, and others in the neighourhood 

 who have been exposed to the same predisposing causes. Some have 

 denied that it is a contagious disease. They must have had little experi- 

 ence. It is true that the matter of farcy must come in contact with a 

 wound or sore, in order to communicate the disease ; but accustomed as 

 horses are to nibble and play wdth each other, and sore as the corners of the 

 mouth are frequently rendered by the bit, it is easy to imagine that this 

 may be easily effected ; and experience tells us, that a horse having farcy 

 ulcers cainiot be suffered to remain with others without extreme risk. 



