156 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



not. There is the long-continued, insidious progress of glan- 

 ders — 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 discharge, undreaded and unrecognized, yet vitia- 

 ted, poisoned, and capable of communicating the disease, 

 may have been long traveling through the frame, affecting 

 the absorbents, and preparing for the sudden display of 

 farcy. 



"One thing, 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 suflS.- 

 cient of this vitiated secretion has been taken up to produce 

 inflammation and ulceration of the absorbents, farcy is es- 

 tablished. Its progress is occasionally very capricious, con- 

 tinuing"/ in a few cases, for months and years, the vigor of 

 the horse remaining unimpaired; and, at other times, run- 

 ning 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 circumscribed and too plainly connected 

 with the joint or the tendon. 



" It may be readily distinguished from grease 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 spasmodic catching 

 up of the leg. In farcy the engorgement is even more sud- 

 den 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 



I 



