644 
GLANDERS. 
other noxious effluvia from the urine, the dung, and the perspira- 
tion. To neutralize or expel this miasm constituted Coleman’s 
principle of ventilation /-^-this was the object he ever and always 
had in view. How far his plans for effecting it were judicious, 
or the best that could, under the circumstances, have been devised, 
is quite another question : that, in general, they proved successful, 
is in a measure shewn in the comparative infrequency of glanders 
and farcy at the present day. I say, in a measure , because we 
have had no reason to take it for granted that contagion had no, 
or even comparatively small, influence : whatever share it might 
have had, however, in the causation, it is not likely that Coleman, 
intent as his mind ever was upon his favourite theory of stable 
" poison,” would have heeded it. 
To my mind, however, Coleman’s own reasoning on the modus 
infectandi of this poison is in every way sufficient to prove that 
the disease, once generated, is capable of spreading by contagion, 
and through the medium of the air, too, from one horse to another. 
If the atmosphere of the stable, charged as we know it to be with 
humidity, can carry a miasm from the excretions and secretions 
into the nose of the liorse, sufficiently concentrated to produce 
glanders and farcy, is there any good reason why the same atmo- 
sphere may not convey the virus of glanders itself, evaporating from 
the nose or lungs of a glandered horse, or from the open buds of a 
farcied one ? Surely, that which can conduct poison from the dung 
or urine upon the floor of the stable, can transport gaseous virus 
from one horse’s nostrils into those of another; — and, surely, the 
virus emanating from a chancrous surface must be as virulent and 
efficacious as any generated in the dung, the urine, or the breath 
of horses in health*. 
Thirdly : no doubt has ever been entertained by me of the 
spontaneous origin of glanders and farcy — of their origin apart 
from the influence of contagion. Coleman, whose field for ob- 
servation was greater than almost any man has enjoyed either 
before or since — he having had the Army, the Ordnance, the Vete- 
rinary College, and some private practice besides, to range over 
— adduced much satisfactory evidence in proof of this fact. He 
shewed that these diseases, on several occasions, had made their 
appearance in situations never inhabited by horses before, and 
* “ A glandered horse may contaminate the air of a stable to such a degree 
that horses breathing the same air may become infected with the disease, al- 
though the infected may never come in contact with the infecting horse. 
Fortunately, glanders is not so infectious as some other diseases to which 
horses are liable, otherwise the breed would soon become extinct.” — Vide an 
admirable article “ On the External Causes of Disease ,” by W. F. Karkeek , 
F./S 1 ., Truro , in The Veterinarian for 1833. 
