380 
ON GLANDKItS IN MAN, &C. 
It is, on the one part, the spontaneous development of glanders 
in the solipede, and the facility with which the disease is propa¬ 
gated among these animals, and, on the other part, the less degree 
of facility with which it is communicated to other species, and to 
man in particular, which have caused it to be believed, until lately, 
that glanders was a disease peculiar to the horse, the ass, and the 
mule. 
Another circumstance contributed to the propagation of the 
error. Comparative pathology, being but little cultivated, the 
physicians did not search among human beings for a malady of 
which the type was unknown to them, and the veterinary surgeons, 
on account of the nature of their studies and their labours, have 
scarcely had the opportunity to observe the existence of it in man: 
nevertheless, an unfortunate circumstance seems to indicate that 
this opportunity should not be suffered quite to pass, for, within less 
than a year, two veterinary pupils have died of this frightful dis¬ 
ease at the School at Alfort, after having dissected some glandered 
horses. 
As to the morbid poison of glanders, and which resides essentially 
in the matter discharged from the nostrils, a previous remark is to 
be made. We know that glanders may be either acute or chronic ; 
that is to say, that it may run its course rapidly in the period of a 
few days, or that it may not arrive at its fatal termination until the 
expiration of many months, or even years. But in these two forms 
of the same malady the contagious property of the discharge is far 
from being the same. Acute glanders is transmitted far more 
readily than chronic glanders; and even that is transmitted with dif¬ 
ficulty separate from the paroxysms or acuteness of character which 
it from time to time assumes, when the animals that labour under it 
have worked harder than usual, or in consequence of other causes 
which influence the progress of the disease. This circumstance— 
the unequal virulence of the same disease in its acute or chronic 
form—has its analogy in the syphilis of the human being. We 
know, in fact, that in a chronic state both the matter of gleet and of 
chancre are not always transmitted by contact, and that the ichor 
of old venereal ulcers is highly contagious, while the pus of conse¬ 
cutive ulcers is not contagious at all. 
The unequal power of the contagious property of acute and chro¬ 
nic glanders has lately induced many veterinary surgeons to consi¬ 
der these two forms of the same disease as two distinct maladies 
and this error has not a little contributed to propagate in France, 
but in France alone, a very serious error, that of the non-contagious 
nature of glanders. 
If a crowd of facts carefully observed have not demonstrated, 
long ago, the contagion of glanders among the solipedes,—if the 
