ON GLANDERS. 
85 
opinion between eminent men frequently leads to the best results, 
occasioning their closer investigation of the subject in dispute ; 
but I am sorry that two gentlemen, to whom we are so much in¬ 
debted for their professional labours, should be induced to make 
use of expressions of personal acrimony towards each other, and 
hope it will be discontinued in any future discussion they may 
have either upon this or any other professional matter. 
The subject of glanders having been brought before your read¬ 
ers, I shall trouble you with a few observations upon that formi¬ 
dable disease ; not with any arrogant feeling of being able to settle 
the question between Mr. Youatt and Mr. Vines, but, in the spi¬ 
rit of inquiry, briefly to recount what I consider to be the result of 
my own practical attention to this disease, and in the hope that 
others, far more competent, may come forward to discuss this 
important question. 
Mr. Vines, in his work upon this subject, entirely sets at 
nought the doctrine of glanders as taught by Mr. Coleman : he 
treats as nothing the experiment which was supposed to prove 
that the disease was communicable through the blood, this fluid 
being in a contaminated state, and ridicules it as going back to 
the exploded doctrines of the humoral pathology. That a dis¬ 
eased state of the blood is the primary cause of some of the most 
important diseases of the human subject, has of late been ably 
advocated by several very scientific men, particularly by Dr. 
Stevens, in his work on the blood, &c. Mr. Vines brings forward 
as an argument against the blood being affected with disease in 
cases of glanders, that he has produced the same results by 
injecting a solution of sulphate of copper or other irritating fluid 
into the veins. -Now, to my mind, this is an experiment in proof 
rather than in refutation of Mr. Coleman’s doctrine, for it proves 
that the blood is in a disordered state in glanders, and capable of 
producing the same effect upon an healthy animal as would 
result from the injection of an irritating fluid into its veins. Whe¬ 
ther Mr. Coleman’s division of glanders into acute or chronic is 
the best that could possibly have been adopted, I shall not stop 
to inquire; but I am fully satisfied of this, that some horses have 
glanders for months without any falling off in their general 
health, and yet communicate the disease to others, which will 
die, before the propagator of the mischief has begun to decline 
in constitutional health. 
Notwithstanding all that has been written and said on the sub¬ 
ject of glanders, 1 am afraid we still have but an imperfect know¬ 
ledge of its true nature, and the doctrine of specific virus appears 
to me equally as intelligible as that of <6 unhealthy inflamma¬ 
tion.” According to Mr. Vines’ theory of “ healthy and un- 
VOL. VII M 
