f 



DISEASES AND INJURIES. IQ7 



in the food or water, or in a ball ; and it can gain introduction 

 to the system by inoculation, through a wound or abrasion, 

 and in other ways. Contact with glandered horses, being 

 put into stables which have been inhabited by them, drinking 

 out of water-troughs they have frequented, or eating from 

 receptacles they have fed in, are the usual ways in which 

 healthy horses acquire the disease. It is most frequently 

 witnessed among large studs of horses, and especially those 

 which are over-worked, improperly fed, or badly housed. 

 A variable period elapses between an animal receiving the 

 poison and the appearance of the first symptoms, but it is 

 between a week and several months. The poison is con- 

 tained in the discharge from the nostrils and from the sores, 

 as well as in the blood and other fluids ; but the disease is 

 mainly spread by means of the matter from the nostrils and 

 sores. In the ass and mule glanders nearly always appears 

 in the acute form and rapidly runs its course. 



Symptoms. The symptoms in acute glanders are much 

 more marked than in the chronic form, but the high fever 

 constitutes the chief difference. This fever lasts for a few 

 days generally, then subsides, but only to reappear after a 

 short interval. There is much depression, and the animal 

 does not care to move. There is usually a discharge of a 

 yellowish sticky matter from one or both nostrils, which 

 adheres around them, and at the same time there is one or 

 more sores or ulcers inside the nostril on the partition separat- 

 ing the nostrils. If the discharge is only from one nostril, 

 then the sores are on that side. When the ulcers are deep, 

 the discharge may be streaked with blood. The glands 

 inside the lower jaw are also enlarged, hard and knotty. 

 Ulcers may or may not appear on the skin at the same time. 

 Sometimes the ulcers are high up in the nostril and cannot 

 be seen, and not unfrequently they extend down the wind- 

 pipe. The lungs are generally implicated, or they may be 

 alone the seat of disease, but this is more frequently the case 

 in chronic glanders. In the acute form, if the horse is not 

 killed it dies from suffocation or exhaustion. 



