364< GLANDERS DESCRIBED BY LA FOSSE. [BOOK II. 



but a temporary disease, not easily communicated, 

 and was known to come within reach of the curative 

 art, if taken in time. Most small proprietors, un- 

 willing to destroy their afflicted horses, maintained 

 that they belonged to the latter description; and 

 in this they were frequently supported by the cu- 

 pidity of practising farriers, who administered 

 medicines and performed operations with a con- 

 fidence which never could belong to any depart- 

 ment of science — and least of all to that of medi- 

 cine *, which is, alas ! ever uncertain. 



* Much inhumanity was shown by the country practitioners in 

 their mode of treatment : they scraped the bone after slitting the 

 nostril ; and also seared the swelled gland with a hot iron. We owed 

 to the elder La Fosse this operation of trepanning for glanders, who 

 doubtless was aware that our own old writers, Gibson and Bracken, 

 had already marked the seat and progress of this disorder. But 

 he might have saved himself the trouble, as he concedes the moot 

 point, by allowing when the bone is found rotten, the animal should 

 be slain ; and the old French government relaxed not its rigorous 

 edicts against the lives ofglandered horses, oususpectc de Vetre. A late 

 traveller applauds the practice of searing ulcers and abscesses, gene- 

 rally, " whereby (adds he, triumphantly) they are reduced to com- 

 mon scalds:" he was then speaking of the doctors in Morocco! 

 mere Turks. The gentleman, probably, did not distinguish between 

 abscess and indolent tumour, as warbles and sitfasts. 



It is related by La Fosse, that in 1801 several regiments in Alsace 

 and Lorraine employed the actual cautery as a cure for glandered 

 horses. Some "applied fire to the jugular gland in three lines; 

 others cauterised the bones of the forehead and nose ; but the most 

 ridiculous affair of all was, to see forty horses together which had 

 fire applied round the eyelids to cure the runnitig," that is so com- 

 mon to all glandular affections about the head ! Of this running, or 

 " defluxion from the eyes," we have already spoken, as attendant 

 u';.on all diseases of the glands of the head, at pages 182, 223, 343, 

 348. 



