52 
THE CAUSES OF GLANDERS AND FARCY 
Many attempts have been made to explain and remove the 
cause of this. No one has entered more fully or satisfactorily 
into the subject than M. Patu. We give, with very little con- 
densation, his Essay on the Causes of Glanders and Farcy in 
Cavalry Regiments. The private practitioner, under whose cog- 
nizance this disease too often comes, will derive many a useful 
hint from it ; and our military veterinarians, from whose barracks 
glanders is now in a manner banished, will read it with interest. 
Y. 
M. Patu ranges the causes of glanders under four heads: — 
Hab ITATION. — The smallness of the stable, or the collection 
of a great number of horses in the same stable, is the most ordi- 
nary and the most effectual cause of the development of farcy. 
This is no novel opinion ; our best veterinarians have again and 
again enforced it ; but my illustrations may, perhaps, differ a 
little from those of others, and tend to confirm theirs. 
In a stable where the horses are accumulated to a degree dis- 
proportionate to the size of the place, the following inconveni- 
ences must necessarily occur : — 
It being impossible that the air should be thoroughly renewed, 
it soon becomes unfit for respiration, either because its respirable 
part has been used, or certain animal exhalations proceeding 
from the perspired matter or from divers other excretions, as the 
urine and the faeces, have mingled with it, or the temperature has 
been considerably raised, than which there cannot be any circum- 
stance more favourable to the union of the atmospheric air with 
every vapour that ascends, however deleterious it may be. 
Or, if the air were pure, there must necessarily be such an in- 
equality of temperature, such a succession of oppressive heats 
and draughts, if the slightest degree of ventilation is attempted, 
as cannot fail of having a very injurious effect on the animal 
economy, and more so because its action is exerted on the most 
delicate organs of the frame. 
It might also be a subject of inquiry, whether the exhalations 
from one animal respired by another may not be more prejudicial 
to him than those emanating from himself ; and whether the de- 
leterious influence would not increase as the animals were multi- 
plied, until there would be an accumulation of morbific influence 
which the strongest constitution could not withstand. This 
may not be capable of rigorous demonstration, but, in fact, it is 
something to arrive at probability in medicine, and certainty 
is a luxury seldom bestowed. 
