SUPPOSED CAUSE OF GLANDERS AND FARCY. 251 
frequency of glanders as a sequela of phthisis, from the 
analogy of the contents of the tubercle to those of the so- 
called farcy-bud of the skin and the miliary one of the nasal 
membrane, and I can readily imagine the degeneracy of these 
into the veritable virus of glanders. 
I was led to these thoughts upon the cause of glanders 
and farcy by reading an account of cases of necrosis of the 
jaw and surrounding parts of persons employed in the manu- 
facture of lucifer matches, in which the disease was attri- 
buted to the phosphorus used in that process ; and I thought 
I could detect a similarity between the progress of this 
malady, although it is evidently local, and the ravages which 
are caused by glanders. 
The late Professor Coleman proved, I believe, that the virus 
of glanders was in the blood, and that it could be generated by 
the atmosphere of foul stables, in which animo-vegetable de- 
bris was allowed to decompose, thus generating miasm ; and 
as, in the decomposition of such matters, phosphorus, in one or 
other of its forms, is evolved, I supposed the possibility of the 
virus being caused by it. After the blood becomes poisoned, 
I think that glanders manifests itself first in the capillaries 
and lymphatics, and especially, when farcy is added, in the 
ganglia of the latter, where the two sets of vessels come into 
such intimate apposition. 
In Percivall’s ‘ Hippopathology/ it is stated that Benard, 
in some researches he made into the nature of the blood in 
glandered horses, discovered albumen to be predominant in 
it according to the length of time the disease had existed, and 
that any amelioration of the patient which took place was 
attended by a corresponding diminution of the quantity of 
albumen. In some horses virulently glandered albumen 
constituted seven eighths of the mass of the blood. May not 
the tribasic phosphates of the blood be acted upon by the 
miasm which is inhaled, causing them to become monobasic, 
and thus to be capable of acting upon the albumen, so as to 
make it difficult for the blood to permeate the capillaries, 
and therefore to increase the proportion of albumen by its 
retention ? I think I am correct in saying, that the matter 
of farcy-buds and of tubercles, together with the discharge 
from the nostrils, have been proved by analysis to consist of 
coagulated albumen and osseous matter. 
If the disease (glanders) be, as Dupuy states, tuberculous, 
then may not these deposits be fed by the abnormal state of the 
albumen ? for Dr. Carpenter affirms that it is the opinion of 
many eminent pathologists, that tubercle, cancer, lepra, &c., 
remove particular morbid matters from the blood with a 
