GLANDERS— MALLEUS 457 



the ranges in the Northwest. As glanders is a local disease 

 in its incipient stages, presenting no clinical symptoms, and 

 usually takes a chronic course, horse owners and persons 

 ignorant of its character not only resist efPorts to eradicate 

 the disease, but disregard its contagious character. It is not 

 uncommon in the United States to find glanderous horses 

 housed, fed, watered, and even worked with healthy horses. 

 Through this neglect, glanders is probably more widespread 

 in this than in any other country in the world. Scandinavia 

 and Australia are free from it. 



Etiology. — Glanders is due to the Bacillus mallei, a straight 

 or slightly curved, aerobic bacillus, which has a character- 

 istic growth on potatoes and is essentially an obligatory 

 parasite. 



Natural Infection. — Susceptible animals are infected with 

 glanders : (a) Through the digestive tract with the food and 

 water which has been contaminated with the discharges 

 (nasal, farcy-bud) or more rarely with manure and urine 

 of glanderous animals, (b) Through skin wounds. Infection 

 through skin wounds is very rare. It may follow the use of 

 an infected harness which rubs and chafes the skin, (c) 

 Through the respiratory tract. It is exceedingly uncommon 

 for glanders to be transmitted in this way, especially if the 

 mucous membranes are intact. The inhalation of the moist 

 spray coughed or sneezed out by a glanderous patient is not a 

 common occurrence; in the dry state the glanders bacilli 

 have a very low virulency. At any rate, primary nasal and 

 lung glanders are exceedingly rare forms, (d) By the act 

 of coitus. Occasionally instances of transmission of the 

 disease from an infected stallion to a mare through copulation 

 are recorded. 



Glanders is nearly always introduced into a stable through 

 an infected individual, usually a horse suffering from chronic 

 pulmonary glanders, and which shows no Symptoms of either 

 nasal or skin glanders'. From this animal it usually spreads 

 to the ones next adjacent or sometimes to animals farther 

 removed in other parts of the stable. When the horses are 

 permitted to drink out of a common trough or fed out of a 

 common crib, the infection spreads more rapidly than 



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