ACUTE AND CHRONIC GLANDERS. 125 
short one,—and are heard of no more, until reproduced as new 
discoveries. The truth of the matter is, that we have amused 
ourselves with worse than useless speculations and theories, instead 
of being employed in the patient accumulation of facts. 
We must pursue our course slowly and cautiously. I will first 
endeavour to connect together the prevailing symptoms; they 
may possibly lead us—they alone can lead us—to the part pri¬ 
marily affected, and to the nature of the morbid affection of that 
part, and to the cause of that affection; and, these important 
points being settled, we may obtain a little knowledge as to the 
prevention of the disease, although we may be compelled to leave 
the remedial treatment pretty nearly where we found it. 
ACUTE AND CHRONIC GLANDERS. 
Before, however, I describe the symptoms of this disease, I 
must enter my protest against the common division of glanders 
into acute and chronic. I am aware that it exists under these 
forms ; but I cannot allow this to any thing like the extent that 
has been represented by some; or that it is so essentially different 
in its nature and character, and governed by such totally opposite 
laws. There is this impropriety in our division, that the chronic 
here comes first, and the acute succeeds. A discharge is ob¬ 
served from one nostril or from both ; it continues for months and 
years, and neither the health nor the usefulness of the horse is 
impaired ; but, all at once, the discharge increases,—chancres 
appear on the septum—the respiration is laborious—the cough is 
urgent—the animal wastes away; farcy buds appear along the 
course of the superficial absorbents—they ulcerate, and death 
quickly closes the scene. 
It is like the scrofula of the human subject; there are small 
glands under the chin or the ear, or about the throat, moveable, 
soft, productive of no inconvenience, and so they continue for one, 
two, or several years ; when all at once they rapidly enlarge; 
they burst; the constitution becomes affected; the ulcers spread; 
the patient becomes emaciated; tubercular phthisis is established, 
and he dies. Now these are only different stages of the same 
disease—various causes, known or unknown, retarding or hasten¬ 
ing its full development and fatal termination. We may, if we 
please, call these stages chronic and acute; but we shall be be¬ 
trayed, as we have been in glanders, into inexplicable confusion, 
if we regard them as different diseases, and governed by different 
and contradictory laws. 
SYMPTOMS OF GLANDERS. 
Nasal Discharge .—The earliest symptom is, almost invariably, 
an increased discharge from the nostril; small in quantity—con- 
