THE EARLY HISTORY OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 277 
and, above all, the negligence of the different governments, pre¬ 
vented the enacting of salutary ordinances on a matter of so great 
importance; and hence it happened, that while there were regu¬ 
lations to prevent the spread of contagion among cattle, no one 
had dreamed of endeavouring to prescribe the biped from the 
danger to which he was exposed. 
The contagious nature of strangles was then known, and the 
same measures of isolation were resorted to, in order to prevent 
other horses from being attacked. Apsyrtus says, expressly, that 
this malady is very dangerous among colts, as we find at the pre¬ 
sent day ; and he carefully distinguishes other diseases of horses 
accompanied by discharge from the nostrils, among which are 
glanders and nasal gleet. The last he clearly describes under the 
name of the humid diseaseand he considers it as easy to 
cure when the mucous discharge has no fetid smell; but, other¬ 
wise, very difficult to get rid of. One would think that he was 
here speaking of glanders. In the malady termed the dry dis¬ 
ease, and which Eumelius regards as incurable, no discharge 
from the nostrils is observed ; but the principal symptom is ma¬ 
lignant inflammation of the lungs and diaphragm. Under the 
name of gouty disease he seems to understand glanders, or ozena, 
with rheumatic affection of the loins or thighs. Theomnestus 
speaks of glanders more clearly under the title of foetid disease, 
to distinguish it from that which is unaccompanied by peculiar 
smell, and which answ'ers to our mild coryza. We must not 
expect from these authors an exact distinction between these dif¬ 
ferent species of nasal disease. They make use of no technical 
terms, but describe what they have seen in common language; 
and they know not how to reduce a complicated malady to the 
various simple affections of which it is made up, as is sufficiently 
evident in the account which Apsyrtus gives of broken wind, 
and which has more resemblance to inflammation of the dia¬ 
phragm terminating in a collection of purulent matter, than to 
asthma properly so called. 
The etiology of glanders, and the diseases analogous to it, 
which we find in the fragments of Apsyrtus, may give us some 
idea of the physiology of veterinarians at that time. ‘^The want 
of a gall-bladder in the horse easily causes a too abundant flow 
