GLANDERS 135 



results are negative so long as the skin remains without a break, a 

 minute lesion, enough to offer an atrium to a bacillus, is easily made. 

 Babes and Cornil rubbed an ointment containing the bacilli on the 

 shorn abdomen of guinea-pigs and succeeded in infecting them, prob- 

 ably through the hair follicles or some lesion not recognizable. It 

 seems also probable that the unbroken mucous membranes of the nasal 

 cavities exclude the bacilli, but in neither man nor horse is this struc- 

 ture likely to remain without microscopic lesions for any great length 

 of time. This is especially true of the horse, on account of the char- 

 acter of its food. Beards and husks and dust are constantly being 

 inhaled while the animal eats, and injury of the mucous membrane 

 of the upper air passages is a frequent occurrence. The mucous mem- 

 brane of the mouth is scarcely less exposed to slight but frequent 

 insult. That the glanders bacillus may find its way through the intes- 

 tinal walls, leaving no recognizable lesion, and first manifest itself 

 in the lungs has been demonstrated by the researches of Nocard. 

 Although LofHer reports a case of human infection through milk, the 

 instance is questioned because other sources of infection were not 

 excluded. Under Viborg's efforts one hundred army horses, found 

 to be infected, were slaughtered in Copenhagen and their flesh used as 

 food without ill effects. Similar instances on a smaller scale have 

 been reported elsewhere. The possibility of intr^-uterine infection in 

 case of a diseased mother is recognized and, indeed, such cases have 

 been reported in both France and Italy. Of all domestic and men- 

 agerie animals, cows and the house rat are the only ones that are 

 known to be immune to glanders, although others differ much in 

 degree of susceptibility. 



