THE HISTORY OF GLANDERS. 
718 
his own notions on the subject : — “ Lafosse appears to us to have 
been the first to have hit upon the true seat of glanders. In shew- 
ing glanders to be a local malady, confined to the cavities of the 
nose, to the sinuses connected with it, and to other parts of the 
nasal membrane, he has established a fact which to us appears in- 
disputable, one that is actually admitted — as, indeed, it ought to 
be — by all candid persons, by all such as make it their rule to 
found their medical observations upon pathological anatomy and 
physiology.” — “ If we have been thus fortunate in our discovery 
of the true seat of glanders, it only remains for us to agree concern- 
ing its nature. To how many hypotheses, founded upon analogies 
more or less erroneous, has not this point given origin 1 and what 
are we to think about a disease whose nature has given rise to so 
much diversity of opinion I Let us leave to the accurate observa- 
tions of minds unbiassed and guided by truth alone the important 
task of discovering and unveiling to us the veritable, the intimate 
nature of glanders ; and, while these researches are making, form- 
ing our opinion from such phenomena as are already within our 
knowledge, let us be content with viewing the disease as a specific 
inflammation of the pituitary membrane ; acute in its incipient 
stage, however short that stage may be — chronic in its other stages, 
possibly so from the beginning ; and, like every other phlegmasia , 
susceptible of re-acting upon other organs with which they are 
connected through sympathy, through reciprocity of relation con- 
necting one with the other, and rendering them reciprocally de- 
pendent one upon the other. In the actual state of our knowledge 
we must not expect to be able to explain what we mean by the in- 
flammation being specific; in what it differs from other inflam- 
mations of the same tissue ; why it should be contagious and 
hitherto prove incurable ; why, as it resembles catarrh at its outset, 
it does not terminate in the same manner, but, on the contrary, as- 
sumes specific characters, distinguishing it from coryza , angina, 
and what is called strangles . When we shall have thoroughly ex- 
amined and probed this question, when we shall have sufficiently 
studied all the points bearing upon its unravelment, perhaps we shall 
find fewer difficulties standing in the way of its solution; — perhaps 
we shall discover that glanders does not differ so much as we had 
imagined from coryza , — perhaps we shall find out that it is nothing 
more than a modification of coryza. It may be, that glanders differs 
from nasal catarrh in nothing beyond its being obstinate and tardy 
in its progress ; that it is analogous to an habitual and chronic 
coryza — or nasal gleet — which may, the same as glanders, entail 
serious consequences ; may be, in spreading by degrees to the 
lungs; may be, in giving rise to ulcerations and excrescences upon 
the pituitary membrane. Besides, do we not know that, in highly 
