VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XVII, No. 204. DECEMBER 1844. New Series/ No. 36. 
THE HISTORY OF GLANDERS, 
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES DOWN TO THE PRESENT; WITH THE 
OPINIONS OF AUTHORS CONCERNING ITS SEAT AND NATURE. 
By WILLIAM PERCIVALL, M.R.C.S., Veterinary Surgeon 
First Life Guards. 
LAFOSSE (senior) in his “ Preface” to his “Treatise upon the 
true Seat of Glanders in Horses,” states, that “great was his sur- 
prise, when he found that such distemper was not only unknown 
to the ancients, but that it was altogether a new disorder, and did not 
appear in Europe till about the year 1494.” — “Twas at the siege 
of Naples, after the arrival of the Spaniards from their discoveries 
in America, that glanders in horses appeared for the first time.” 
“ PARAZZER is the first author who has mentioned it, — he himself 
was at the siege; and the Spanish authors are the first who have 
given us the history of this disease, which they term Muormo*.” 
Dupuy, however, in his prefatory history — “partie histo- 
rique” — contradicts this account on the authority of MM. Masse 
and Jourdain, two French veterinary writers who have been at 
the pains to translate the writings of the Greek hippiatrists, and 
from whom, he says, we learn that the father of medicine himself, 
Hippocrates, was acquainted with the disease, and has, in its con- 
firmed stage, pronounced the malady incurable. 
VEGETIUS, who wrote in the fourth century, has described one 
disorder he has called morbus humidus, and another he has named 
* A Treatise upon the True Seat of Glanders in Horses, together 
with the Method of Cure, &e. with cuts. By M. l)e La Fosse, master 
farrier of Paris, and farrier to the King’s Stables, 1751. 
VOL. XVII. 5 A 
