CHAPTER XII. 



GLANDERS AND RHINOSCLEROMA. 



GLANDERS. 



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

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

 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 Schiitz. 



Within recent years 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 corresponding effects in animals suffering from glanders 

 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 

 intermediate 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 susceptible to inoculation (vide infra}. 



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

 tion on 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. 



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