VETERINARY SCHOOL AT ALFORT. 
553 
Such, in point of fact, is the position occupied by our animals in 
agricultural and industrial affairs, that maladies which decimate 
them affect the sources of public revenue; in like manner as is 
their amelioration, their perfectionment, and their well-being a 
source of general prosperity. 
And such, indeed, is the fellowship established in habitation 
between man and the beast submitted to his empire, that many 
maladies are common to both ; and through some mysterious con- 
nection become readily transmited from one to the other. 
In this two-fold point of view, the compte-rendu of the clinical 
chair possesses a general interest, and this consideration of 'its 
utility will, doubtless, excuse the mention of some disclosures we 
are about to make. 
Of all the constitutional disorders to which monodactyles are 
subject, that which has for some years demanded the foremost at- 
tention of the public is glanders; and it has acquired this legiti- 
mate priority as well from its effects, and the ravages it daily 
commits among the equine race, as from the property it possesses 
of being capable of transmission to man : fatal property ! too mani- 
fest at our day to admit of denial. 
What is the nature of this terrible disease? — What are its 
causes] — In what manner is it communicated? — What form does 
it assume ? — How is it to be cured ? — How prevented ? 
Such are the complex problems incessantly presented to the 
minds of those engaged in making observations on the disease 
for a period of three thousand years, towards the solution of 
which each day brings with it its tardy contingency of enlighten- 
ment. 
The year but just passed, unfortunately yet more fruitful, as it 
would seem, than its predecessors in furnishing subjects for ob- 
servation, has added but little to the truths already in store on the 
history of glanders ; but it has served to confirm them, to prop 
them with fresh observations, and such important matters will per- 
haps bear repetition in such general form as is ordinarily assumed. 
Like signals at sea, which by their uniformity of colour are so 
significantly known to the mariner, such phenomena cannot too 
often be brought before us. 
I. Glanders, originally confined to monodactyles, is a disease in 
the acute form evidently and demonstrably contagious, from a virus 
fixed, and volatile too perhaps ; but in the chronic form, doubtfully, 
disputedly, and very disputably so. 
II. Its transmission in the acute form offers every facility from 
the horse to animals of the same species, by direct contact, and 
perhaps simply by co-habitation as well, without contact. 
