gi.andeus and farcy in man. 
217 
account of a knacker who died at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital of 
glanders, and the nurse who attended him took the disease arid 
died also — this is the first instance on record of glanders being 
transmitted from one human being to another ; and M. Gibert, of 
Paris, relates a case, in the Revue Medicate for November 1840, 
of a man named Pagout who died of acute glanders after having 
suffered dreadfully for some days. 
“ Several cases of glanders have been published in the English 
journals since that date, proving the identity, if any more proof 
were wanting, of glanders in the horse and in man.” 
While the fact of the human body being capable of taking 
glanders and farcy from horses has become established, there is no 
example on record of man breeding such a disease in his own per- 
son — apart from the influence of contagion : a man may catch the 
disease from another man as well as from a horse, but he cannot, 
the same as a horse, have the disease originating in his own body 
in consequence of exposure to the miasm of the stable or from other 
causes. Why is this] Knowing the aerial membrane to be the 
seat of glanders, and knowing the horse to be an animal that 
respires through his nose to the entire exclusion of his mouth, I 
have always, in my own mind, considered these two facts linked 
together as offering some key to the explanation we are at present 
in quest of. The membrane lining the air-passages has, the same 
as other mucous membranes, its natural and unnatural or baneful 
excitants. Air of a kind proper for the purposes of respiration is 
of the first description, and such as is of a quality unfitted for 
respiration, or as contains noxious ingredients of any kind, is of 
the latter description. The excitation, although preternatural, 
may still not be deleterious or pernicious : on the other hand, it 
may be of a malignant or poisonous nature — such as will produce 
glanders. But, if so in the horse, why not the same in man ] Be- 
cause, in the first place, man respires through his mouth more than 
through his nose, the latter furnishing air-passages of compara- 
tively inconsiderable dimensions ; secondly, because the Schnei- 
derian membrane does not possess the same sensitiveness or 
susceptibility that the horse’s does; and, thirdly, because any 
miasm originating in the excretions of one species of animal does 
not appear to prove to be poisonous, or not necessarily to be so, to 
another species of animal : men huddled together in close habita- 
tions for any length of time breed fever of some kind, but not 
glanders or farcy; horses, crowded together in ships or unventi- 
lated stables for any length of time, breed farcy and glanders, and 
a kind of ophthalmia unknown to human eyes. From this it 
would appear that the miasm of the stable, although it produces 
glanders and farcy, does not contain the virus or poison of glanders; 
