458 CHRONIC INFECTIOUS DISEASES 



under opposite conditions. It is a notorious fact that an 

 apparently sound horse may infect a large number of horses 

 with which it comes in direct or indirect contact. Dealers' 

 stables and livery barns may be more or less permanently 

 infected. Strange horses brought there to be fed or watered 

 are thus exposed to the infection. Public watering troughs 

 are particularly dangerous in this regard. The horse is not 

 as susceptible to glanders as the ass or the mule. In fact, 

 horses offer a remarkable resistance to infection, the disease 

 in them usually assuming a chronic form, and sometimes 

 ending in recovery. In asses glanders usually takes an acute 

 course with rapid and fatal termination. The mule in this 

 regard seems to stand between the two. Obviously anything 

 which will reduce the resistance of the horse, such as over- 

 work, poor food, exposure to weather, etc., will render the 

 animal more susceptible. 



Symptoms. — Following natiu-al infection, weeks or months 

 may elapse before clinical symptoms appear, although during 

 this time the patient may show an occasional rise in tem- 

 perature. In not a few instances prominent clinical symptoms 

 never occur during the life of the patient. 



The period of incubation is usually placed at two weeks. 



For convenience it is customary to classify glanders from a 

 clinical standpoint as: (a) Nasal glanders; (&) skin glanders^; 

 (c) pulmonary glanders. In this connection it is well to bear 

 in mind, however, that any two or all three of these forms 

 may be combined. Further, it is very rare not to find pul- 

 monary glanders present either alone or associated with 

 skin and nasal lesions. 



Nasal Glanders. — ^The first symptom noted is usually 

 nasal discharge, which is very commonly unilateral. The 

 quality and amount of the discharge vary greatly. In 

 chronic glanders it is at first serous or mucoserous; later it 

 becomes more copious, quite viscid, and often mixed with 

 blood. The discharge tends to adhere to the wings of the 

 nostrils, where it dries to form brownish crusts. Coughing 

 or sneezing momentarily augments the discharge, which is 

 rarely odorous. 



' Skin glanders was formerly known as farcy, which term is now practi- 

 cally obsolete. 



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