46 
REFLECTIONS ON GLANDERS. 
to add, has turned to little amount : glanders — confirmed glanders 
— has baffled every effort.” 
Now, just in proportion as disease or any other calamity pre- 
vails uncontrolable, so does the human mind become incited and 
absorbed in devising its nature. 
Of those who desire to understand the nature of glanders (and 
where is the man of science, medical or non-medical, who does 
not!), all must read Percivall. 
In addition to the general merits of the book, it is invested with 
a charm of a very rare order, viz., truth from beginning to end ; the 
author, not having been wedded to any particular cherished theory, 
the facts of history, together with the facts of observation and ex- 
periment, are brought from the earliest records up to the present 
day, unadulterated and genuine, from their numerous and varied 
sources. 
My own opportunities of observation have been extensive in all 
the varied employments to which the horse has been subjected, 
and therefore I indulge in the hope that a few additional remarks, 
notwithstanding my praises, may not be deemed inconsistent, 
should they clash, or even differ, with the views of the author. 
Mr. P. has referred to that inimitable teacher, the late revered 
Professor Coleman, and his original doctrines on glanders, in a 
manner to which they are fairly entitled ; but this leads me to em- 
brace an opportunity of recording my dissent to certain conclusions 
arrived at by Professor Coleman, Mr. Percivall, and others, from 
the memorable experiments instituted many years ago at the R. V. 
College of London, of transfusion of the blood of a glandered horse 
into the bloodvessels of a healthy ass, whereby glanders is said to 
have been produced, and emphatically commented on by Mr. Per- 
civall as “ irrefragable proof of the constitutional nature of glan- 
ders and farcy.” Here I am somewhat at issue with Mr. P., and 
have my misgivings that there was something fallacious in the re- 
sult. I object to the experiment upon two grounds ; first, that the 
ass, although of the horse species, is an improper subject as the re- 
cipient for the test, by inoculation or transfusion , owing to a pre- 
disposition or tendency in his constitution to generate glanders 
(amounting to idiosyncrasy) upon the slightest invasion of his vas- 
cular system by any foreign agent, especially if accompanied with 
the least obstruction in any part of the respiratory apparatus, whe- 
ther within the passages of the head or thorax ; secondly, the rude 
manner in which the Professor’s celebrated experiment was con- 
ducted, vide Percivall, page 208 : — “ In consequence of transfusing 
more blood than was requisite , the ass appeared puffed out and 
swollen in every part of his body ” It further appears that four or 
five days elapsed before the tumefaction was relieved, in the course 
