REFLECTIONS ON GLANDERS. 
161 
Post-mortem examinations have for many years past convinced 
us that the solid vitals are generally implicated in the disease, but 
more recent experience has unfolded an additional light, viz., that 
the blood itself is invariably the strong hold of our enemy, and 
unto that extremity of the system must be pursued and expelled. 
A change of the entire mass of the blood of a glandered horse (by 
the operation of transfusion) for the healthy blood of another horse 
should precede the other attempts for cure. 
Will you please to accept of some old veterinary reminiscences 
for your far-famed Journal, as they may occasionally occur to my 
mind ] 
My chief hobby-horse through life as a recreation has been the 
prosecution of experiments, physiological and pathological, princi- 
pally on the larger animals, the horse especially: I have thus in- 
dulged in the expenditure of considerable time, and also a little 
money. One of my first was at Croydon, in the vacation between the 
first and second year of my pupillage at the Royal Veterinary Col- 
lege of London. I perceive, by notes made at the time, that I styled 
the experiment Purgation in the horse through the agency of 
aloes in direct contact with the circulating blood. 
To purge and cleanse the blood, both of the human and brute 
animal, has been a favourite and popular axiom in the science of 
therapeutics at all times, and remains in vogue at the present day; 
but I am not aware that either professionals or non-medical men 
have carried this out to the very letter : they have applied the irri- 
tating agent to the internal surfaces of stomach and intestines, and 
by theory have inferred that the blood has been cleansed. 
The Case. 
No. I, of a Series. 
A vigorous carriage-horse, sound, in good working condition, 
fifteen years old, was ordered to be destroyed, his services not 
being required. 
The off jugular vein was opened with a full-sized common 
fleam; a small tube was inserted in the vein downwards ; the 
upper part of this tube, above the orifice, having attached to it a 
large tunnel-like opening, which was kept closed as much as pos- 
sible, to prevent the admission of atmospheric air into the vein. 
In the mean time, six drachms of Barbadoes aloes had been dis- 
solved in a quart of water. Half a pint of this solution, at a tem- 
perature of 98°, was allowed to run through the tunnel into the 
vein, but injection with syringe was studiously avoided. The in- 
strument being withdrawn, the orifice was closed with the fingers 
for a quarter of an hour, without any apparent effect being pro- 
VOL. XVIII. z 
