FROM THE HORSE TO THE HUMAN BEING. 
577 
This classification appears to me more natural and approximating 
to the truth than that which human surgeons have been in the habit 
of borrowing from their veterinary brethren ; for acute glanders, 
which has hitherto invariably and rapidly proved mortal in the hu- 
man being, cannot be compared with chronic glanders, which rather 
resembles farcy in its duration and symptoms. We will endeavour 
to establish this position. 
The most violent form under which the farcino-glanderous 
poisoning manifests itself, is that of acute glanders. In all the in- 
dividuals hitherto attacked it has proved mortal, whether preceded 
by farcy or appearing at once. 
Farcy develops itself much more gradually, and runs its course 
with a degree of rapidity or slowness proportionate to the amount 
of resistance which it encounters in the human organization it af- 
fects, and which it destroys by degrees ; the remissions observed 
in this disease seeming to prepare the organization for the super- 
vention of acute glanders, which generally comes to terminate the 
sufferings and life of the unfortunate farcy- afflicted patient. 
We must not absolutely reject the division of farcy into acute 
and chronic, because the signs which serve to demonstrate it are 
not sufficiently characteristic, and the fact itself is of no great 
moment in a practical point of view. 
Should we found this dichotomy on the duration of the disease, 
we should find it difficult to define the period at which the acute 
state terminates and the chronic begins, if, in the progress of 
the symptoms, we should meet, in chronic farcy, with abscesses 
that take on the phlegmonous character. The best plan, therefore, 
is to study farcy, and endeavour to recognise all its variations ; for 
the divisions hitherto adopted are difficult to be established, often 
confounded one with the other, and no therapeutic indication de- 
rived from them. 
Farcy may occasionally be cured. There are some records of 
such cases attested by the evidence of eminent men : it must, how- 
ever, be confessed that they are but few in number. Hence it is 
evident that there is a kind of farcy that does not become com- 
plicated with acute glanders : this I have denominated simple farcy , 
and that term exactly describes the disease. Unfortunately, the 
signs which serve to distinguish it from severe farcy are not suffi- 
ciently prominent to enable us at once to detect them ; but the at- 
tention of medical men being now directed to this point, it is to be 
hoped that some definite means of distinguishing these varieties of 
farcy one from the other will soon be discovered. 
Those medical men who first wrote on farcy and glanders 
borrowed the theories entertained by veterinarians respecting these 
diseases, and, consequently, were compelled to bring all the cases 
