450 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



It will be seen by this table that 699 animals have been 

 destroyed as having glanders or farcy between Dec. 15, 

 1899, and Dec. 15, 1900. Of these, 697 were horses and 2 

 were mules. There were 149 animals released from quar- 

 antine after careful examination, as free from disease, and 1 

 is still an undecided case, being under observation at the 

 time of preparing this report. 



Three of the horses killed will have to be paid for by the 

 Commonwealth, as being free from a contagious disease. 

 In two of these cases guinea pigs inoculated with some of 

 the nasal discharge developed glanders ; the horses were 

 killed, and upon post-mortem examination no lesions of 

 glanders could be found ; the owners agreed to a reasonable 

 valuation, and will have to be recompensed. It is impossi- 

 ble to produce glanders in guinea pigs without having the 

 germs of glanders present in the material used ; and, as this 

 work was carefully done, it seems certain that the micro- 

 organisms of the disease must have been present, yet no 

 lesions were found in the horses killed. It seems possible, 

 then, that animals may carry the germs of disease for a 

 while before appreciable gross lesions develop, and may be 

 a source of danger to others while apparently in a fair state 

 of health themselves, aside from a nasal catarrh or some 

 sfmilar disturbance, in the same manner that a person ap- 

 parently free from disease can carry the bacillus of diphthe- 

 ria in the throat, infecting other persons while apparently 

 in health himself. 



It is much better to occasionally kill and pay for such an 

 animal, than it would be to err in the opposite direction, 

 and allow a suspicious case to run at large, spreading the 

 disease wherever it went, because it is not certain that it is 

 infected. 



The third horse was owned in Salem. He had a discharge 

 from the left nostril, erosions on the mucous membrane in 

 the nose and a very much enlarged sub-maxillary gland on 

 the left side. Because of these symptoms he was ordered 

 killed by a member of the commission, and an autopsy held, 

 at which a number of veterinary surgeons were present. 

 The animal was found to be suffering from a cancer of the 

 palate, the bones in the roof of the mouth on the near side 



