584 
GLANDERS. 
matter that had the desired effect was procured from a condemned 
subject in the last or ripest stage of acute glanders. In order to 
insure inoculation for small-pox or for vaccination, we know sur- 
geons to be very particular about the day on which they collect 
their lymph, believing, nay, knowing, it to be more efficacious or 
“ stronger” at one period than at another, and to grow less effica- 
cious or “ weaker” as the disease declines. Why should not some- 
thing of the same kind happen in the progress of glanders or farcy 1 
It is, indeed, asserted, and on good authority, that in the acute 
forms or stages these diseases are more contagious than in the 
chronic or latent forms or stages ; a fact which seems to harmonize 
with the result of our experiment upon the ass, as well as with 
what we have just observed in regard to the small-pox and cow- 
pox ; those diseases being found to be most contagious when at 
the height of their natural course. 
But inoculated glanders differs strangely from inoculated diseases 
in general — from inoculated small-pox and cow-pox, for example. 
These disorders are rendered mild and comparatively harmless by 
being produced in such manner, whereas glanders, the product of 
inoculation, commonly manifests itself with augmented virulence 
and malignity. A horse taking glanders in the common way, 
apparently spontaneously, may, and often does, have the disease in 
a sub-acute or comparatively mild form ; whereas, when we inocu- 
late an ass for the disease, we expect no other result than, should 
the inoculation take effect, to see it fall a prey to the ravages of 
glanders and farcy in the very short space of time of ten or twelve 
days ! Aware of this, we are furnished at once with a reply to 
persons who inquire of us, why we do not inoculate horses for 
glanders or farcy, the same as surgeons do children for small-pox 
and cow-pox'? But, supposing even that the disease were, by 
inoculation, rendered comparatively mild, and in that mild form 
were curable, still are we not certain that once having it would 
prove any immunity against taking it afterwards. The fact of the 
disease appearing in an aggravated rather than a mitigated form 
after inoculation, also, in some measure, accounts for the rapid and 
fatal course of it in those melancholy cases in which man has been 
the subject of it. I do not know that in any instance man has 
taken the disease save from inoculation : a fact somewhat singular, 
and one that possibly may prove of some service to us hereafter. 
It is not reasoning on sound pathological principles to argue that 
a disease is not contagious, simply from the circumstance of matter 
supposed, or even proved, to contain its virus having been be- 
smeared upon the Schneiderian membrane, or having been swal- 
lowed into the stomach, without being followed by contamination. 
I have myself, on several occasions, rubbed upon the membrane 
