126 THE HORSE. 



The early and marked symptom of glanders is a discharge from the nostrils 

 of a peculiar character ; and if that, even before it becomes purulent, be 

 rubbed on a wound, or on a mucous surface, as the nostrils, it will produce 

 a similar disease. Glanders are not communicated by the air or breath. 

 If the division between two horses were sufficiently high to prevent all 

 smelling and snorting at each other, and contact of every kind, and they 

 drunk not out of the same pail, a sound horse might live for years,^^ unin- 

 fected, by the side of a glandered one. The matter of glanders has been 

 mixed up into a ball, and given to a healthy horse, without effect ; yet in 

 another experiment of the same kind, the poor animal died. The mouth 

 or gullet had probably some small wounds or ulcers in it. Some horses 

 have eaten the hay left by those that were glandered, and no bad con- 

 sequence has followed ; but others have been speedily infected. The 

 glanderous matter must come in contact with'a wound, or fall on some 

 membrane, thin and delicate like that of the nose, and through which it 

 may be absorbed. It is easy, then, accustomed as horses are to smell each 

 other, and to recognize each other by the smell ; eating out of the same 

 manger, and drinking from the same pail, to imagine that the disease may 

 be very readily communicated. One horse has passed another when he 

 was in the act of snorting, and has become glandered. Some fillies 

 have received the infection, from the matter blown by the wind across a 

 lane, when a glandered horse, in the opposite field, has claimed acquaint- 

 ance by neighing or snorting. It is almost impossible for an infected 

 horse to remain long in a stable with others, without irreparable 

 mischief. 



If some persons underrate the danger, it is because the disease may 

 remain unrecognized in the infected horse for some months, or even years ; 

 and therefore when it appears, it is attributed to other causes, or to after 

 inoculation. We would deeply impress it on the mind of the farmer, that 

 no glandered horse should be employed on his farm in any kind of w^ork, 

 or permitted to remain for a day on his premises : nor^should a glandered 

 horse be permitted to work on any road, or even to pasture on any field. 

 He may be capable of work for years alter the disease has become 

 undoubted, but mischief may so easily and extensively be effected, that the 

 public interest demands that every infected animal should be summarily 

 destroyed, or given over for experiment to a veterinary surgeon, or recog- 

 nized veterinary establishment. 



Our opinion of the treatment of glanders is implied in what we have 

 just stated. There are a few instances of the spontaneous cure of chronic 

 glanders, or glanders long established and slow in their progress. The 

 discharge has existed for a considerable time ; at length it has gradually 

 diminished, and has ceased without mediCal treatment : but in the majority 

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

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

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

 months, has become farcied, or consumptive, and died. We view these 

 cures with much suspicion : but even allowing that some have occurred, 

 they are so few and far between, that our expressed opinion of the incurable 

 nature of the disease, in the present state of veterinary knowledge, is 

 scarcely affected. 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 used. The blue vitriol and the Spanish-fly have held out longest, 

 and in a few cases, either nature, or these medicines, have done wonders j 



