282 GLANDERS AND RHINOSCLEROMA. 



leucocytes, many of which are polymorpho-nuclear, and have 

 recently emigrated from the vessels, whilst the tissue elements 

 between may be more or less degenerating, or may show pro- 

 liferative changes. And further, the inflammatory change may 

 be followed by suppurative softening of the tissue, especially in 

 certain situations, such as the subcutaneous tissue and lymphatic 

 glands. The nodules, therefore, in glanders, as Baumgarten 

 puts it, occupy an intermediate position between miliary ab- 

 scesses and tubercles. The diffuse coagulative necrosis and 

 caseation which are so common in tubercle do not occur to the 

 same degree in glanders, and typical giant-cells are not formed. 

 The nodules in the lungs show leucocytic infiltration and thicken- 

 ing of the alveolar walls, whilst the vesicles are filled with 

 catarrhal cells ; i.e. there is reaction both on the part of the 

 connective tissue, and of the endothelium of the air vesicles, 

 whilst at the periphery of the nodules connective-tissue growth 

 is present in proportion to their age. The tendency to spread 

 by the lymphatics is always a well-marked feature, and when the 

 bacilli gain entrance to the blood stream, they soon settle in the 

 various tissues and organs. Accordingly, even in acute cases it 

 is usually quite impossible to detect the bacilli in the circulating 

 blood, though sometimes they have been found. It is an inter- 

 esting fact, shown by observations of the disease both in the 

 human subject and in the horse, as well as by experiments on 

 guinea-pigs, that the mucous membrane of the nose may become 

 infected by means of the blood stream — another example of the 

 tendency of organisms to settle in special sites. 



Mode of Spread. — Glanders usually spreads from a diseased 

 animal by direct contagion with the discharge from the nose or 

 from the sores, etc. So far as infection of the human subject 

 goes, no other mode is known. There is no evidence that the 

 disease is produced in man by inhalation of the bacilli in the 

 dried condition. Some authorities consider that pulmonary 

 glanders may be produced in this way in the horse, whilst others 

 maintain that in all cases there is first a lesion of the nasal 

 mucous membrane or of the skin surface, and that the lung is 

 affected secondarily. Babes, however, found that the disease 

 could be readily produced in susceptible animals by exposing 

 them to an atmosphere in which pulverised cultures of the 

 bacillus had been. He also found that inunction of the skin 



