194 SPECIAL EQUINE THERAPY 



GLANDERS 



Glanders of horses is an infectious disease that appears 

 most commonly as an insidious, chronic manifestation of 

 lesions involving chiefly the respiratory tract. Less fre- 

 quently it appears as a local disease in the skin and 

 regional lymphatics, and stiU less frequently it appears 

 in an acute form. It is a disease that is generally held to 

 be incurable and against the treatment of which the vari- 

 ous states of the Union have enacted regulations. 



Glanders, like tuberculosis, seems to be a disease that 

 follows the trail of civilization; in fact, formerly many 

 able veterinary pathologists considered glanders to be the 

 equine form of a tubercular process. It is now a proved 

 fact, however, that such is not the case, and that glanders 

 is a distinct disease caused by an infection with the Bac- 

 terium mallei. The disease is said to be unknown in 

 regions where modern commerce and the interchange of 

 horses among alien peoples are not actively indulged. 



Like dourine, glanders is important to the practicing 

 veterinarian chiefly from the standpoint of diagnosis. As 

 a result of active regulation and modified methods of 

 eradication this disease is not nearly so prevalent as it 

 was twenty, or even ten, years ago. In former times 

 glanders frequently made its appearance among bodies of 

 horses in a form that could almost be termed an epizootic. 

 No doubt an occurrence of this sort was possible only 

 because of lax quarantine and improper prophylactic 

 measures. The universal recognition of the true infec- 

 tious character, and the most common sources of contam- 

 ination, is having the effect of an ultimate total eradi- 

 cation of this disease. 



Symptoms. In discussing the symptoms of glanders 

 it becomes necessary to classify the disease into three 



