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 Renatus, who lived in 
the time of Theodosius (381 A. D.), described, under the name of 
“malleus humidus,” 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 Sollysel, 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 stated 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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