206 CAUSES OF GLANDERS IN CAVALRY HORSES. 
is but little known*, while in the French army, where the animals 
are well fed, carefully cleaned, for the most part moderate!}' worked, 
and (since the stables have been improved and remodelled) well 
lodged ; in fine, where they receive the full benefit of hygienic 
care, glanders commits the greatest ravages. 
We can only, therefore, attribute the cause of this to the sup- 
pression of perspiration. In the French army, various circum- 
stances may be seen occurring every day, liable to have an inju- 
rious effect on the functions of the skin. At the head of these we 
place the long dressings out of doors, and especially of a morning, 
when the air is cold and damp, and the horse has passed the night 
in a stable the temperature of which is high ; there is also too great 
a desire frequently to renew the air of stables by the opening of 
doors and windows, and the establishment of currents of fresh air. 
Ill-managed farm-stables, where the temperature is generally very 
high, proves that heat is more conducive to the conservation of 
the health of horses than the ammoniacal gas and carbonic acid 
evolved is fruitful in engendering disease. 
Let us not, therefore, seek for the cause of the prevalence of 
glanders in the army elsewhere than in derangement of the func- 
tions of the skin. 
I will endeavour to explain the sympathy existing between the 
skin and the mucous membranes. These latter constantly secrete 
a mucus which lubricates them. In a state of health the secre- 
tions offer nothing worthy of observation ; but if the cutaneous 
perspiration be arrested or diminished, the secretions become more 
abundant : the cause which increases them continuing, they dege- 
nerate into chronic catarrh, constituting a pathological state, which 
is neither more nor less than glanders. 
Hence we see that the cutaneous perspiration being deranged, 
nature transports to other parts of the system the matter which 
these secretions are intended as emunctories to throw off. It will 
doubtless be objected, that the urinary secretion comes to the as- 
sistance of impeded perspiration, and that Nature avails herself of 
this eliminatory passage to reject all injurious matters. To this I 
reply, that although, in point of fact, the urine is more abundant 
under such circumstances, yet this secretion cannot wholly supply 
the place of the suppressed perspiration. In the case now under 
our notice, the equilibrium generally destroys itself by throwing 
the attack on the pituitary, or occasionally on the lungs or the 
pleura, from which species of matastasis results glanders, pneu- 
* Excepting in some of the large hackney-coach and posting establish- 
ments at Paris, where the horses stand in the cold after having become heated, 
and being in a state of perspiration, and are thus, in this latter point of view, 
placed in the same category with some troop-horses. 
