270 STABLE MANUAL AND HORSE DOCTOR 



that glanders is incurable, and that farcy is curable. This 

 is not, however, a reason why investigation should be 

 relaxed or abandoned, although the long-sought-for and 

 often - proclaimed specific, or the successful plan of 

 treatment, yet remains to be discovered. 



FARCY. 



We have already said that farcy and glanders are modifi- 

 cations of the same disease. Farcy was for a long time 

 supposed to be a disease of the veins; a natural error, seeing 

 the lymphatic vessels along which the virus travels were 

 then considered as a sort of vein, if not veins themselves. 

 Later writers regard the farcy-bud as the degeneration and 

 coagulation of the lymph. Farcy may be said to have its 

 seat in the skin; that of glanders being accounted to be 

 the pituitary membrane. Glanders and farcj^ together 

 constitute one and the same disease of the lymphatic vessels 

 and their glands. The disease originates in these vessels, 

 and for a time confines itself to them. In the course of its 

 progress, however, it extends into the contiguous tissues, 

 affecting in one case the true skin, in the other the mucous 

 lining of the air-passages; and it is in these parts respectively 

 that the phenomena of farcy and glanders are exhibited. 

 No wonder, therefore, that the appearances in farcy (the 

 local symptoms) should differ so much from those of 

 glanders; and that the buds and ulcerations of the one 

 should be found, in the course of treatment, so much more 

 manageable or more " curaljle " than those of the other form 

 of disease ; or that one disease should be so much more 

 dangerous to the animal affected, as well as to horses 

 (in health) around him, than the other. Inflammation in 

 the cutis is a different disease from inflammation in a 

 mucous membrane, productive of different phenomena, 

 and requiring a different treatment : hence the apparently 

 wide differences between two diseases essentially or in 

 nature alike. 



Treatment of Farcy. — The system must be supported by 

 a generous and agreeable, but not too stimulating, diet, to 

 which carrots and green food foi-m useful additions. The 

 horse must be exercised daily. If we determine on empty- 

 ing the bowels, mix firstly a purgative and diuretic mass 

 together (see Medicines) into a ball of moderate strength. 



