STATE HYGIENE 567 



means of insurance, but by improving the sanitary condi- 

 tions under which horses live and work. 



Where the law should step in with no uncertain voice is 

 in its regulations for controlling the spread of the disease ; 

 it only legislates for animals visibly glandered, yet it cannot 

 be ignorant of the fact that it is now possible to determine 

 whether any other horses in the stud are affected, though 

 not visibly glandered. These in time become clinical cases, 

 cause further infection before being recognised, and so the 

 disease hangs to the place month by month and year by 

 year. Frequently the owner gets alarmed, and takes an 

 opportunity of selling off his infected stud. This the law 

 cannot prevent, although it is within its knowledge that a 

 visibly glandered horse has, perhaps, quite recently been 

 destroyed in this stable. 



It is here we consider the law is particularly weak ; rigid 

 regulations exist regarding notification of the affected, 

 movements and isolation, but nothing is done to deal with 

 the smouldering elements left alive in the stud, though to 

 pick them out is a matter of simplicity. In other words, 

 the law contents itself with the visibly diseased only, and 

 takes no notice of the others ; it attempts to control the 

 disease but not to stamp it out. 



To effect this latter the law should insist on the whole 

 stud of horses being malleined on the existence of a case of 

 the disease, and all that react should be ear-marked. If 

 the State is not prepared to pay compensation it cannot 

 insist on the ' reactors ' being destroyed, but it should insist 

 on periodical inspections, so that animals may, at the 

 earliest possible opportunity, be picked out as they become 

 visibly affected. 



There are many animals which react to mallein with 

 months', perhaps a year or two's, work left in them, and 

 though if we wished to eradicate the disease the right thing 

 to do in the present state of our knowledge is to destroy 

 them, yet the proceeding is so costly as to be prohibitive. 

 For such animals the only scheme is isolation, to be kept, 

 fed, watered, and worked by themselves, until the almost 



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