CHAPTER XV 



GLANDERS 



History. As early as the fourth century the infective nature of 

 this disease was held by a few observing men. In the seventeenth 

 century Solleysel taught that glanders is highly infectious, may extend 

 from stall to stall, and that the air becomes impregnated with the 

 infection. In the next century certain French veterinarians recom- 

 mended that diseased horses should be isolated, observed, and if found 

 to have glanders should be killed. In the last decennium of the eight- 

 eenth century a Danish veterinarian, Viborg, inoculated sound horses 

 with pus, blood, nasal secretions, saliva, urine and perspiration from 

 glandered animals, and succeeded in transmitting the disease. He 

 showed that heat destroys the infective agent. Later it was shown 

 that donkeys, goats, sheep, dogs, cats, rabbits and guinea-pigs are 

 susceptible. This work led to experiments with the view of disinfecting 

 the discharges and stalls which had been occupied by diseased ani- 

 mals. Chaveau showed that the infection is carried, for the most 

 part at least, in the corpuscular elements of the discharges. In 1881 

 Babes and Havas of Roumania found bacilli in the pus from an abscess 

 on a man who had the disease. Bouchard and others saw the organ- 

 ism, but its isolation and identification resulted from the work of 

 Loffler and Schutz (1882). Certain cases of glanders remained diffi- 

 cult of diagnosis because of the organs involved, there being no avail- 

 able discharge. The discovery of mallein by two Russian physicians 

 in 1890 and the demonstration that this is a valuable diagnostic agent, 

 as tuberculin is in tuberculosis, made the recognition of these occult 

 cases possible and aided greatly in the restriction of the disease. Acute 

 glanders, which is seen both in men and horses, is a rapidly fatal dis- 

 ease. After a short (from two to five days) incubation period the 

 temperature often becomes very high (106-107 F.), there is marked 

 prostration and great pain in the joints and limbs. Local ulceration 

 deepens rapidly and boils and abscesses appear on various parts of 



