CHAPTER XII. 



GLANDERS AND RHINOSCLEROMA. 

 GLANDERS. 



THE bacillus of glanders (bacillus mallei ; Fr., bacille de la 

 morve ; Ger., Rotzbacillus) was discovered by Loffler and Schutz, 

 the announcement of this discovery being made towards the end 

 of 1882. They not only obtained pure cultures of this organism 

 from the tissues in the disease, but by experiments on horses 

 and other animals conclusively established its causal relationship. 

 These have been fully confirmed. The same organism has also 

 been cultivated from the disease in the human subject, first by 

 Weichselbaum in 1885, who obtained it from the pustules in a 

 case of acute glanders in a woman, and by inoculation of animals 

 obtained results similar to those of Loffler and Schutz. 



Within more recent times a substance, mallein, has been 

 obtained from the cultures of the glanders bacillus by a method 

 similar to that by which tuberculin was prepared, and has been 

 found to produce effects in animals suffering from glanders corre- 

 sponding to those produced by tuberculin in tuberculous animals. 



The Natural Disease. Glanders chiefly affects the equine 

 species horses, mules, and asses. Horned cattle, on the other 

 hand, are quite immune, whilst goats and sheep occupy an inter- 

 mediate position, the former being rather more susceptible and 

 occasionally suffering from the natural disease. It also occurs 

 in some of the carnivora cats, lions and tigers in menageries, 

 which animals are infected from the carcases of animals affected 

 with the disease. Many of the small rodents are highly sus- 

 ceptible to inoculation (vide infra). 



Glanders is also found in man as the result of direct inocula- 

 tion of some wound of the skin or other part by means of the 

 discharges or diseased tissues of an animal affected, and hence is 

 commonest amongst grooms and others whose work brings them 

 into contact with horses ; even amongst them it is a comparatively 

 rare disease. 



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