GLANDERS. 
585 
what I imagined to be glanderous matter with impunity. On the 
other hand, I have produced the disease in this manner. In an 
experiment apparently so simple as this appears, there are still 
several conditions on which its success must depend. There is 
the condition of the matter , dependent on the kind, the stage, the 
duration of the disease affecting the subject from which it was 
taken ; next, there is the condition of the subject to which it is 
applied to receive the disease and, lastly, there is to be taken 
into the account the condition of the Schneiderian membrane, ordi- 
narily shielded as it is by its natural mucous secretion from 
harm, and resistent as it is by nature to the action of virus or 
poison of any kind. I have, on many occasions, imbrued my own 
hands with the matter of glanders, falsely believing my consti- 
tution to be insusceptible of taking any harm, and therefore 
unheeding whether there were scratches or wounds upon my 
hands or not : although however I have escaped, and hundreds of 
others have escaped infection, }^et, at length, did one and then 
another person catch the disease; and now veterinarians no longer 
dare do that which they have a hundred times before fearlessly 
done, and with impunity. 
With regard to the fact of the matter of glanders having been 
made up into balls, and so introduced into the stomachs of a horse 
or ass without producing the disease, a fact to which much im- 
portance has been attached by some of our non-contagionists, it is 
no more than in accordance with experiments of the same kind 
that have been made with other poisons. Speedily and deadly 
fatal as the Woorara poison is known to be, inserted in the form of 
inoculation, Sir Benjamin Brodie found he could administer it by 
the mouth, even in considerable quantities, without producing any 
perceptible effect whatever. 
* I quite agree in opinion with Mr. Vines, that “ strong, healthy, well- 
bred horses are by far the least susceptible — “while, on the contrary, those 
animals which are badly fed and out of condition, especially asses, whose 
systems are always weak, are the most susceptible .” — Practical Treatise on 
the Diseases of the Horse. 
