382 
ON GLANDERS. 
from the nose; and he characterizes farcy as the most dangerous 
(des morves), adding, that it is a Proteus, capable of assuming a 
variety of forms, referable to the parts wherein it is seated ; and 
that it is a schirrous and cancerous affection. Speaking of 
strangles, he observes, “ that so long as people believe contagious 
diseases to be necessary, so long do they continue slaves to pre¬ 
judice; but that whenever they can muster courage enough once 
to throw off the yoke, they will feel convinced that it is no more 
necessary that a horse should have the strangles than a man. 
Aristotle assures us, that horses roving wild in woods are not 
liable to the disorder. What is so improperly called strangles 
(gourme), is nothing more than a phlegmonous inflammation of 
the throat, which ends in ulceration of it. If contagion gave rise 
to it, what occasion have we chimerically to ascribe to it a depu¬ 
ration of the blood ?— an idea that will remain unintelligible so 
long as men believe in the existence of innate seeds of inflamma¬ 
tory disorders, strangles, and these pretended depurators, terms 
only fit to eternize error. It would be far wiser to seek out the 
veritable sources of these several maladies.” 
M. Chabert attained great celebrity: his memoir on glanders 
was inserted in the Recueil de la Societe de Medccine de Paris , 
in the year 1779, and his Instruction on the Aleans of ascertain¬ 
ing its Existence , was lavishly diffused by government, and has 
become a class book. These works contain no new theory : the 
author seems to have considered prognosis and proximate cause 
as foreign to the plan of his w r ork; he writes more in the charac¬ 
ter of a historian than a proficient veterinarian; the principles he 
espouses are those of Soleysel, whose text he has elucidated, and 
whose ideas he has expounded without comment or amplification. 
His principal aim was to inform the pupil, to enlighten him in 
practice, and to guide him in the application of curative mea¬ 
sures ; to this point he exclusively directs his observations, re¬ 
searches, and indications. He points out as the diagnostic traits 
of glanders, fluxion from one nostril, the conservation of health 
and spirits, the slowness of its progress, and its occasional inter¬ 
missions. The causes are, he avers, contagion, forage of bad 
quality, suppressed transpiration, neglected strangles or bastard 
strangles, the dispersion of humours by local means, the sudden 
repression of cutaneous eruptions, mange, farcy, &c. Glanders that 
ends in farcy oftenest proves curable; and vice versa . He divides 
the disease in progress into three periods or stages. The first 
is characterised by a whitish fluid discharge ; by congestion and 
inflammation of the nasal membrane; and by the attendant good 
health of the animal: added to which, idiopathic glanders is ac¬ 
companied by a cough. In the second stage } the flux grows 
