THE HORSE IN SICKNESS AND DISEASE 265 



As the disorder proceeds, it affects both sides. Chancres 

 appear all over the pituitary membrane, occasioned by the 

 erosive nature of the discharge. This assumes a different 

 appearance as the fluids of the individual may have been 

 more or less vitiated. The appearance or quality of the 

 discharge differs also, according to the manner in which the 

 disease may have been engendered or caught by infection, 

 as is already shown in distinguishing the acute and sub- 

 acute varieties. If it come of the first-mentioned, through 

 a depraved system, the glands are harder, often smaller, and 

 always adhere more closely than in those cases which are 

 derived from infection at a time when the animal is other- 

 wise in comparatively good health. Again, with the infected 

 horse the matter comes off copiously ; it is curdled, and 

 may be rubbed to powder between the fingers when dried. 

 It subsequently hardens, and becomes chalky when sub- 

 mitted to acids ; whereas, the animal that engenders the 

 disease without receiving infection, sends forth matter that 

 is parti-coloured, less in quantity, blackish, watery, and 

 mixed with bloody and white mucus. 



Well worthy of remark is the fact that when horses in a 

 tolerable state of health first receive infection, they show 

 mettle, and are full of freaks ; as the disorder proceeds in 

 its ravages this spirit goes off. Other acquired diseases 

 have the same effects on animals — the venereal, for example, 

 on man. 



A great stench accompanies the discharge in long- 

 confirmed glanders, which increases during the latter 

 stages of the disorder; and the stableman who has once 

 scented it may presently ascertain whether glandered horses 

 have been recently kept in any stable he may examine for 

 the purpose of detection. 



In duration, hardly any disease can be more uncertain 

 than chronic glanders. It may continue, simply as a 

 discharge from one nostril, accompanied by submaxillary 

 glandular enlargement, with very little or unimportant 

 variation in either, for months — nay, for years. On the 

 other hand, it may run into the acute in as many weeks. 

 Any person, therefore, having a horse of this description in 

 his possession, can at no period say how long it may be 

 before the disorder may show itself in an active, nay, 

 rapidly destructive form. In some cases the nasal flux runs 

 for a long period with but slight or unimportant alteration • 



