490 G-ENERAL DISEASES. 



less than three weeks. A clean bill of health should not be given 

 to a.ny tested horse, until it has ceased to react, preferably on two 

 consecutive occasions. Although it would be the safer plan to 

 keep the reacting horses entirely isolated, the small risk of allow- 

 ing them toi go out and work might be disregarded, on condition 

 that they were not to enter any stable except their own. 



The following additional rules would greatly help the good work 

 in question : — 



4. Compulsciry notification hy veterinary Burgeons of all cases 

 of glanders and of all reacting cases seen by them in their respec- 

 tive practices. 



5. To 'prohibit the use of mallein, except by veterinary surgeons 

 and medical men. If these two rules were made law, they would 

 greatly help to check the spread of glanders, by preventing to a 

 considerable extent the sal© of reacting horses, which in all cases 

 are a. source of danger. Professor Sir John McFadyean (" Journal 

 of Comparative Pathology," Dec. 1897) remarks : " Glanders at the 

 present time is mainly spread from stable to stable not by the 

 traffic in clinically gland&red horses, but by the sale and purchase 

 of horses that have the disease in an occult form, and no plan which 

 fails to take note of this fact is deserving of serious consideration." 



Epizootic Lymphangitis 



(Neapolitan or Benign Farcy). 



NATURE. — This disease, which was first described in 187.3, is 

 a specific and contagious form of lymphangitis, and appears to be 

 confined to horses, donkeys and mules. It is well known in Italy, 

 Algeria, France, Egypt, Guadaloupe, and other temperate and 

 torrid lands ; but it cannot exist in cold countries. It was recog- 

 nised in 1899 among horses at the Indian Remount Dep6ts of 

 Karnal and Hapur, where it had been mistaken for farcy, with 

 tlie result that many remounts were needlessly destroyed, althougJi 

 tests with mallein (p. 626) gave negative results. In this case, it 

 had been imported by mules from Italy. 



CAUSE. — This disease is due to a microbe, the cryptococcus 

 farciminosus, which is about one six-thousandth of an inch in 

 diameter. When pus from a freshly-opened abscess is micro- 

 scopically examined with a power of 400 or 5,00, these organisms 

 appear as rounded bodies with somewhat pointed ends', or one 

 end pointed and the other rounded, highly refractile and presenting 

 a double contour. At first sight one is immediately reminded of 

 the likeness of this organism to the coccidium oviforme so fre- 



