538 
REVIEW— PERCIVALL ON GLANDERS. 
long and serious consideration of the matter, have arrived at the 
conclusion, that the number of infectious diseases is very limited 
indeed, the number of contagious ones very considerable : of the 
former, we find in the human subject the small-pox, measles, and 
a few others; in the horse not one; and yet we have in the work 
before us authorities (God save the mark!) quoted to shew that 
glanders is both contagious and infectious. Now of the contagion 
of glanders, i. e., its communicability by positive contact, we have 
no more doubt than we have of that of the poison of syphilis : 
they are the two most prominent instances of their class ; but as to 
their being infectious, why the very idea is pregnant with utter 
ruin and desolation. 
Imagine, for one moment, the syphilitic miasma floating through 
the atmosphere, contaminating every individual who breathed — 
not the breath of life — but the breath of extermination under its 
pestilential and withering influence, and you imagine the annihila- 
tion of the human race. Imagine for one moment the miasm of 
glanders stealthily but inevitably pervading the establishment where 
one victim has been cut down. Imagine those who have breathed 
and become impregnated with its noisome effects contaminating 
other localities which had heretofore been pervaded by a pure air 
and healthy atmosphere, and you imagine the extinction of the 
equine race. But all may not be affected, or its deleterious 
influence might be shaken off. “ Nonsense !” as easily might the 
poisoned shirt of Hercules have been stripped off him, or the magic 
scarf of the Sylphide thrown aside ; but the effects are there, — the 
contamination is completed, and disease and death revel in the 
result. No, no ; the cases wherein Providence allows diseases thus 
stealthily, imperceptibly, and uncontrollably to work their way 
without warning, and therefore without prevention, are few and far 
between ; but those in which carelessness, filth, neglect, and un- 
bridled passions rush headlong into contact with the fearful 
sources of loathsome disease, producing effects awful indeed, but 
which are too easily recognized, and too surely traced to their 
sources, are but too common. 
Farcy and glanders, our author says, are one disease ; but dis- 
posed, as we are, to place considerable reliance on most of his dicta, 
yet still we have our misgivings on this. John Hunter asserted 
that syphilis and gonorrhoea were one disease. Who says so 
now] If, then, so high an authority was mistaken, — if Homer some- 
times nods, — why are we, thought-tied and opinion-bound, to 
deliver ourselves up to the Juggernauts of the profession] We 
see certain and positive differences between the two diseases ; we 
see them existing apart from or co-existent with each other ; we 
see the one cured, the other not so ; we see the one subsiding 
