Glanders in Man. 247 



considering the great number of exposures relatively to the vic- 

 tims. Yet the infection of man is altogether too common to be 

 lightly passed over. The infection is almost always derived 

 directly or indirectly from the horse, yet a number of cases have 

 been derived from the human being through handling the dishes, 

 towels or handkerchiefs of a patient, dressing his wounds, or per- 

 forming a necropsy. Other cases like that of Dr. Hoffman of 

 Vienna, came from handling artificial cultures of the bacillus 

 mallei. 



Glanders is preeminently an industrial disease, attacking per- 

 sons of the following occupations : hostlers 42, farmers and horse 

 owners 19, horse butchers 13, coachmen and drivers 11, veterina- 

 rians and veterinary students 10, soldiers 5, surgeons 4, garden- 

 ers 3, horse dealers 2, policeman, shepherd, blacksmith, employe 

 at a veterinary school, and washerwoman, i each. 



The modes of transmission are essentially the same as in the 

 animal. In the great majority of cases there has been the direct 

 contact of the infecting discharges with a wound of the human 

 victim. Handling the diseased horse with injured hands, giving 

 him a bolus and scratching the hand on the teeth, examining the 

 the nose, sleeping under a blanket which has been used on a 

 glandered horse, removing the dressings of such an animal or 

 performing a post mortem examination on him are familar ex- 

 amples. The particles scattered by the diseased animal in 

 snorting, will infect the mucous membrane of the eye or nose, 

 and all the more readily if these are already sore or abraded. 

 Infection of man by ingestion has been discredited mainly because 

 the carcasses of glandered horses have often been eaten with 

 impunity ; but this may be largely accounted for by cooking, the 

 bacillus being destroyed by a temperature of 131° F. Carnivora 

 such as dogs, cats, lions, polar bears and prairie dogs have been 

 infected by feeding. Men also have been infected through 

 drinking from the same bucket after a glandered horse. After 

 making full allowance for the inimical action of the gastric juice, 

 we must admit that this has often failed, and there is the added 

 danger of abrasions of the lips, mouth and throat and of the 

 entrance of the microbe into the tonsillar follicles and gland ducts. 

 Still other cases are recorded of men .sleeping in stables, but not 

 handling horses, who contracted glanders, presumably, through 



