558 VETEEINAEY HYGIENE 



Glanders was most prevalent during the war in South 

 Africa. Clinical cases were picked out by thousands, yet 

 we never heard of a man, either white or black, being 

 affected, though the risk of infection was greater than could 

 ever occur in civil life. 



We do not consider that Hunting's argument on this 

 point is a very strong one, though we fully admit aerial 

 infection can never occupy the same position as infection 

 through the digestive, canal. 



It is beyond all shadow of doubt that if the discharge from 

 a glandered horse be introduced into the stomach of a 

 healthy one infection results. This discharge may find its 

 way in by food, or from nose-bags, mangers, pails, water- 

 troughs, in fact anything connected with food or feeding on 

 to which the discharge may fall. The nostrils and mouth 

 are such a short distance apart, that in the act of feeding, 

 the poison must of necessity find its way into mangers and 

 surrounding parts, and healthy horses fed from the same 

 place or same nose-bag run the gravest risk. Hunting is 

 therefore right to insist on infection by the digestive 

 canal. 



Infection by contact is only possible if the virus be intro- 

 duced under the skin, or if after being placed on the unbroken 

 skin it finally finds its way into the mouth. Take, for 

 example, a glandered horse in a field, he can infect his com- 

 panions either through the grass he has soiled with the nasal 

 discharge during grazing, or from discharge he has left on 

 the bodies of the other horses during their period of com- 

 panionship ; say, for instance, this discharge is left on the 

 sides, it may easily be ingested through the horse biting 

 himself either as the result of fly or skin irritation. 



Hunting does not regard the public water-trough as a 

 serious source of danger, though he admits the open 

 trough in a stable yard at which glandered horses drink is a 

 fertile cause of the spread of the disease. The position 

 therefore appears to be this, that the number of glandered 

 horses watered at a public trough is very small, and the 

 risk appears to be worth running, in the face of the greater 



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