GLANDERS AND FARCY. 163 



"Glanders is, fortunately, a rare disease in this country (Scot- 

 land), thanks to the pole-ax. Englishmen have long since advo- 

 cated and practiced the shooting of suspected animals, rather than 

 trusting the lives of men and horses to the chances of escape, 

 wherever cases of chronic nasal discharge are met with. The com- 

 mand officer and veterinarian of a British cavalry regiment would 

 < onsider it a great disgrace if such a disease acquired any firm hold 

 in their stables ; and in spite of occasional introductions of the dis- 

 ease when a number of remounts may be purchased, the unrelent- 

 ing order to kill rather than attempt to cure, saves the public purse 

 and the reputation of those responsible for the health and condi- 

 tion of our troop horses. I am as great an advocate for the 

 slaughter of glandered horses as I am for the slaughter of cattle 

 affected with rinderpest. Glanders is more incurable than the 

 cattle plague, as not even ten per cent, recover, but its commu- 

 nication is less certain and swift. It never could and never did 

 destroy its tens of thousands over a country in the short space 

 of time in which the steppe murrain spreads over the land, but 

 it is, nevertheless, wise and proper to stamp it out. We have not 

 indulged, as do our neighbors the French — who manage this 

 matter, at all events, worse than we — in wild theories as to the 

 transmissibility of acute and not of chronic glanders. \Ve admit 

 it to be always contagious and always deadly, and prevent it kill- 

 ing by shooting its victims. 



Nasal Gleet. 



\Ve must not, however, forget that there are hundreds — nay, 

 thousands — of cases of chronic nasal discharge which admit of 

 some diagnosis on the part of skilled veterinarians, and which 

 are erroneously set down as cases of glanders. Many of these 

 cases are condemned because they baffle the attempts to restore 

 them for a great length of time; and, unfortunately, in this 

 country many forms of nasal disease have been rarely cured, 

 simply because their nature has not been understood, and bold 

 surgical operations have been dreaded. I could relate the histo- 

 ries of many cases which have yielded to radical measures after 

 several veterinarians had pronounced the animals incurably gland- 

 ered — more to get rid of them, perhaps, than from a conviction 

 that they were suffering from the disease. I have seen as many 

 as half a do^en animals, in a stable containing a score of horses. 



