582 CONTAGION OF CHRONIC GLANDERS. 
is it possible to add to this curt history. Nevertheless, I 
believe that sufficient attention has not been given to the 
functional modifications of the skin. Its dryness, its absence 
of healthy gloss, its particular condition, have certainly an 
importance capable of affording aid in the discovery of causes 
operating in the derangement of the organic harmony. 
The etiology of glanders has been a sheet of canvass upon 
which have been figured, in a thousand ways, all that the 
imagination could produce. The only theory, however, which 
has stood its ground, and which becomes more and more 
confirmed, is that which reckons as principal causes all cir- 
cumstances tending to wear the wheels of the organism, or 
to clog the functions of the skin ; near to which, as more 
remote ones, come the influence occasioned by pain, of short or 
long duration, the chronicity of certain affections, and the 
resorption of morbid products, especially those which direct 
their operation upon the regular secretions or affections of 
the skin. 
All these primary influences are far from having the same 
potency. Some there are which, in a state of isolation, con- 
tinue their action even unto death without inducing those 
symptoms which constitute glanders ; while others there are 
which, without the combination of any foreign agent, provoke 
at once the disease. According to my view, one cause alone 
among the primary influences might of its own accord 
engender glanders; such as arrest of perspiration, followed 
by resorption of the modified excreting products, acidified 
perhaps through the action of the air. This operation seems 
of value in practice, if we for a moment consider which the 
horses are most liable to take glanders. In this category 
we place those who, either through quick or hard work, are 
subjected to profuse sweatings ; such as diligence horses, post- 
horses, horses used in towing, in road waggons, employed in 
fortified towns, or with troops. 
Under increased respiration, violent exertion forces the 
blood more under the operation of the air, so that it imbibes 
a larger quantity of exciting elements, and becomes charged 
with products to an amount which, not finding combination 
with the circulating mass, become ejected by the various 
organs, and above all by the skin. By some such influence 
the cutaneous functions being all at once suspended, what is 
to become of all those materials which ought to be ejected 
by perspiration ? They cannot remain in the economy with- 
out arousing functional disorder in the different systems. 
If we come to examine into the conditions most favorable 
to the arrest of perspiration, we find the influence of cold 
