MALLEIN. 617 



is much more diagnostic than a rise of temperature. Mr. Hunting 

 regards them as equally important. 



The better the reactions are marked, the stronger will be the 

 suspicion that glanders is present. 



A horse may fail to react, on account of the shortness of time 

 between infection and this test, in which case the period of latency 

 is probably less than a week. " In one series of experiments, 

 Nocard infected four horses by feeding, and when he tested them 

 with mallein on the sixth day afterwards, the reaction was so 

 intense that for three days it was feared that they would die. In 

 Nocard's second series of experiments, the first mallein test sub- 

 sequent to infection was made on the fifteenth day, and they all 

 reacted in the clearest manner." (" Journal of Comparative Path- 

 ology "). Repeated injections of mallein with short intervals 

 between them, render a still infected animal liable to give no 

 reaction. If we have reason to suppose that the non-reaction has 

 been due to this cause, we should make a second test, not less 

 than two months after the first one. In a glandered horse, mallein 

 appears to have the effect of causing the bacilli of this disease 

 to become isolated and encapsuled in the tissues, especially in 

 the lungs. Although they may be thus rendered inert for a time, 

 they may escape later on from their surroundings, and may re- 

 infect the animal. The longer the interval between these two 

 tests, when neither of them have given any reaction, the greater 

 is the probability that the horse is free from the disease. Mr. 

 Hunting tells us that repeated injections of mallein decrease the 

 extent of the local reaction much more than they do that of the 

 rise of temperature. 



VALUE OF MALLEIN AS A MEANS FOR RECOGNISING 

 THE PRESENCE OF GLANDERS.— Extremely numerous and 

 most elaborate experiments have been made in England and on 

 the Continent during the past ten years, as to the value of mallein 

 in this respect, with the result that our veterinary surgeons are 

 practically unanimous in regarding it as an indispensable and 

 highly reliable, though not absolutely infallible, aid to the diag- 

 nosis of this disease. Its employment, which is the only possible 

 m.ethod of deciding the case, when the suspected animal shows 

 no outward signs of glanders, is easy of accomplishrrent, ex- 

 peditious, cheap, and entirely harmless to either healthy or 

 diseased horses. For distinguishing ulcerative lymphangitis (p. 

 505) and epizootic lymphangitis (p. 503) from farcy, mallein is abso- 

 lutely indispensable, unless the observer is furnished with a bao- 

 teriological microscope, and knows how to ^se it, 



