554 VETEEINAEY HYGIENE 



centres of infection, but is powerless to act through the 

 unsatisfactory state of the law. 



We have said it is due to the comparatively quiet 

 behaviour of glanders that no popular feeling exists for its 

 suppression, though one would have thought that the fact 

 of it being communicable to man would have aroused some 

 instinct of humanity ; but as the recorded deaths in the 

 human subject from a most loathsome disease only number 

 about half a dozen a year, we cannot expect this to seriously 

 weigh with a race singularly unsentimental. 



In the case of Eabies it only became a strong argument 

 when the deaths among humans numbered some scores 

 annually, and a genuine feeling of alarm for personal 

 safety was felt ; no such feeling will ever exist regarding 

 glanders, as horses and stables are an unknown quantity to 

 the vast majority of people. 



If effective legislation ever becomes possible, it will only 

 be through the agitation of the horse-owning public ; it 

 would then require a very powerful administration to vote 

 public money for the suppression of a disease, the effects of 

 which are only felt by a minute fraction of the community, 

 and, further, an affection which causes no inconvenience or 

 immediate loss to anyone but the owner. 



Yet all these are arguments in favour of effective legisla- 

 tion ; the mere fact that the vast majority of the public 

 can never have their pockets touched by the existence of 

 glanders in the kingdom, is no reason why the State should 

 not take the matter in hand. As a matter of fact it does 

 deal effectively with the question so far as its own property 

 is concerned, and there is no reason why it should allow 

 contagion to exist as a menace, either to its own horses or 

 those of the public, if legislation can control it. 



There is always another side to the question : the State 

 expects the public to take an interest in the care and pre- 

 servation of its own property, and deprecates paternal 

 legislation ; up to a certain point the view is this right one, 

 and was the basis of our national progress in the past. 



It possibly argues that in business horses are not kept to 



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