INFECTIOUS DISEASES. 545 



culty to sheep and goats, and cattle seem to be entirely immune. It 

 runs a variable course and usually produces the death of the animal 

 affected with it. It is characterized by the formation of neoplasms, 

 or nodules, of connective tissue, which degenerate into ulcers, from 

 which exude a peculiar discharge. It is accompanied with a variable 

 degree of fever, according to the rapidity of its course. It is sub- 

 ject to various complications of the lymphatic glands, of the lungs, 

 of the testicles, of the internal organs, and of the subcutaneous con- 

 nective, tissue. 



History. — Glanders is one of the oldest diseases of which we have 

 definite knowledge in the history of medicine. Absyrtus, the Greek 

 veterinarian in the army of Constantine the Great, described it with 

 considerable accuracy and recognized the contagiousness of its char- 

 acter. Another Greek veterinarian, Vegetius Eenatus, who lived in 

 the time of Theodosius (381 A. D.), described, under the name of 

 " malleus huihidus," a disease of the horse characterized by a nasal 

 discharge and accompanied by superficial ulcers. He recognized 

 the contagious properties of the discharge of the external ulcers, and 

 recommended that all animals sick with the disease be separated at 

 once with the greatest care from the others and should be pastured 

 in separate fields, for fear the other animals should become affected. 



In 1682 SoUysel, the stable master of Louis XIV, published an 

 account of glanders and farcy, which he considered closely related to 

 each other, although he did not recognize them as identical. He 

 admitted the existence of a virus which communicated the disease 

 from an infected animal to a sound one. He called special attention 

 to the feed troughs and water buckets as being the media of conta- 

 gion. He divided glanders into two forms — one malignant and con- 

 tagious and the other benign — and he gtated that there was always 

 danger of infection. 



Garsault in 1746 said that " as this disease is communicated very 

 easily and can infect in a very short time a prodigious number of 

 horses by means of the discharges which may be licked up, animals 

 infected with glanders should be destroyed." 



Bourgelat, the founder of veterinary schools, in his " Elements of 

 Hippiatry," published in 1755, establishes glanders as a virulent 

 disease. 



Extensive outbreaks of glanders are described as prevailing in the 

 great armies of continental Europe and England from time to time 

 during the periods of all the wars of the last few centuries. 



Glanders was imported into America at the close of the eighteenth 

 century, and before the end of the first half of the last century had 

 spread to a considerable degree among the horses of the Middle and 

 immediately adjoining Southern States. This disease was unknown 



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