456 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



physicians, and other diagnoses are made. It has been 

 diagnosed as typhoid fever, pneumonia, pleurisy, peri- 

 carditis, inflammatory rheumatism, pyaemia, small-pox, 

 and possibly as cancer of the throat. Considering, there- 

 fore, the great prevalence of this disease among horses, it 

 is not unlikely that there may be, once in a great while, a 

 case in man which is never correctly diagnosed. 



An instance illustrating the difficulty of eradicating this 

 malady, on account of its slow development in some cases, 

 and the possibility of an animal being a bearer of disease 

 for some time before definite symptoms develop, is demon- 

 strated in a case killed by order of the commission in 

 Ashby last October. This animal was a four-year-old colt, 

 apparently in very good condition, plump and sleek, yet 

 with well-marked symptoms of glanders. This colt was at 

 pasture with a glandered horse in the summer of 1899, 

 killed in July of that year ; the colt's owner said that it 

 had a cough when he brought it home the previous 

 autumn, — a slight, dry cough, which disappeared when it 

 commenced to run at the nose, about six weeks before it 

 was killed. It is possible for the colt to have contracted 

 the disease in some other way, but it is not at all improb- 

 able that it was infected fifteen months previous to the 

 time of killing, and, being young and vigorous, it held the 

 disease in check for a long time. 



As to the spread of the infection, there are various ways 

 in which the disorder is disseminated. The Board is of the 

 opinion, as it has said in previous reports, that public 

 watering troughs are one cause, and that in many instances 

 they are misplaced charities. Blacksmith shops, hitching 

 posts, baiting stables, where a healthy horse may be put 

 in a stall previously occupied by a diseased one, and the 

 actual contact of diseased with healthy horses either at home 

 or on the street, are all factors in the extension of glanders, 

 some of course much more important than others. 



In the last annual report a condition of afiairs was re- 

 ferred to in Melrose, near the lines of Maiden and Saugus, 

 where there are men who buy old horses to kill, the refuse 

 and ofial being fed to pigs, and the meat sold either to dog 



