ON THE PRODUCTION OF GLANDERS. 225 
In other words, chronic glanders predisposes the orgasm it has 
invaded to acute glanders. 
This predisposition is such that we are able, at will even, and 
through an experimental course, to convert into the acute stage 
chronic glanders, well characterized and defined as such by its 
symptoms. 
Arouse, for example, in a horse affected with chronic glanders, an 
intense fever, either by performing a surgical operation upon him 
or in any other way, such as traumatic lesion in some sensitive 
part, or by administering some corrosive poison, such as sublimate, 
and it is nine to one but glanders resumes its acute form under the 
influence of the febrile commotion. M. Renault and myself have 
made this experiment at the College, not once only, but perhaps a 
hundred times, and have uniformly announced to the pupils the 
results. And what has proved remarkable is, that the glanders, 
which in the chronic form had no power of transmitting the disease 
by inoculation, acquired this property as soon as, received as it 
were by the fever excited, it had assumed the acute form. 
This is an important fact, affording a key to difficulties which 
have presented themselves to inquirers into the contagious pro- 
perties of glanders in its chronic form. The reason is, that the 
disease is not fixed under this form, and that, changing its nature, 
it all at once acquires the external characters and properties of 
acute glanders. For this, in practice, it suffices that the func- 
tions be temporarily disordered, that the work be augmented or 
accelerated, that the harness gall, and there be a small wound from 
a nail, &c. Any cause, indeed, which may operate in disturbing 
the organic functions in an animal having chronic glanders is liable 
to produce eruption of the acute. 
To give one example among a thousand : — In 1816, an English 
bred mare, still young, and very fast in her paces, was given up to 
the College on account of chronic glanders. One night I drove 
this animal in a tilbury nearly seven miles in twenty minutes, being 
at the rate of nearly twenty-one miles an hour. On reaching the 
College gates the mare fell exhausted ; the following morning she 
shewed symptoms of nascent acute glanders, and some days after- 
wards had the disease fully developed, and died of it. The autopsy 
displayed every charcteristic lesion. 
This striking example of what I have advanced is realized often 
in practice, when horses affected with chronic glanders are taken 
to work ; and instances of contagion of this kind, which we regard 
as demonstrations of the contagious properties of chronic glanders, 
so called, is nothing else but an example of contagion of acute 
glanders masked under outward appearances. 
To givean authentic example of this : — Some years ago a man of 
VOL. XXIII. Ii h 
