PATHOGENICITY OF GLANDERS BACILLUS 345 



and a 1 in 5000 solution of corrosive sublimate are fatal 

 in two to five minutes. 



Pathogenicity , etc. The glanders bacillus varies con- 

 siderably in virulence, and under continued cultivation 

 may become almost non-pathogenic. 



Glanders is met with exclusively among horses, asses, 

 and mules, and man is infected from these animals, nearly 

 all cases of human glanders being among ostlers, grooms, 

 and coachmen, and the usual mode of infection is by 

 farcy pus or nasal discharge coming into contact with a 

 cutaneous wound or abrasion. A remarkable immunity, 

 however, is enjoyed by the slaughterers, who have to deal 

 with the carcases of glandered animals, and who might 

 be supposed to run the greatest risk. But it must be 

 remembered that Babes frequently found at the post- 

 mortem on persons who had to do with horses, and who 

 died from diseases other than glanders, encapsuled glanders 

 nodules in the lungs and internal organs, suggesting that 

 the disease may often be latent in man, who appears to 

 be relatively insusceptible, and that infection may be 

 possible by inhalation. In the horse glanders is readily 

 transmissible experimentally both by ingestion and by 

 inoculation, and ingestion is probably the common mode 

 of infection naturally, infection by inhalation occasionally 

 occurring. Even when glanders bacilli are administered 

 experimentally by the mouth in the horse, the lesions may 

 be most prominent in, or even be confined to, the lungs. 

 In the horse, the disease has periods of epidemic prevalence, 

 and is particularly frequent in London. In 1892 there 

 were 3000 equine cases in Great Britain, in 1903 there were 

 2499 cases, and nearly 90 per cent, of all cases occur in the 

 Metropolitan area. These, it is to be noted, were cases 

 in which the disease was well developed and manifest, but 

 there are also numerous others in which it is latent. 

 Guinea-pigs and field mice are highly susceptible to the 



