THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XVIII, No. 209. MAY 1845. New Series, No. 41. 
GLANDERS AND FARCY IN MAN. 
By William Percivall, M.R.C.S.L. 
TO the brute creation mankind is indebted for three important 
additions to their nosological catalogue : one conferring upon our 
nature a signal blessing — if any thing in the shape of disease can 
be so denominated ; while the two others, certainly, cannot be re- 
garded in any other light than, to the extent they are operative, as 
signal curses. At the same time that we exult in the discovery of 
Jenner, who, through extending his professional researches into 
cattle medicine, ascertained that a pock was transferable from the 
cow to the human being, which was not only in itself, and in its 
results, innocuous, but had the salutary efficacy of either rendering 
the human body insusceptible of smallpox, or of so altering the 
condition of our body for the reception of that dangerous disease 
as to render its attack comparatively mild and harmless, we have 
to deplore what veterinary medicine has brought to light, viz. the 
fact that, in addition to our bodies being susceptible of taking 
rabies from the dog, they are likewise capable of taking glanders 
and farcy from horses. While a pupil at the Veterinary College, 
during the sessional years 1809-10 and 1811, I, in common with 
many others, repeatedly heard it pronounced, ex cathedra , by 
Professor Coleman, that the horse and his fellows in kind, the ass 
and the mule, were alone obnoxious to the disease known under 
the appellations of glanders and farcy ; — that man, and all other 
animals, save these, were as insusceptible of taking such a disease, 
as animals, on their part, were of taking certain contagious dis- 
eases proper to man, or of taking certain other diseases 'pecu- 
liar to certain other distinct species of the animal creation. And 
the universal and complete immunity the students at the College — 
myself among the number — all along had enjoyed and still con- 
Aol. xviii. l 1 
