SYMPTOMS OF GLANDERS. 135 
fectly discharged. Absorption of the fluid discharged from the 
ulcer must precede the constitutional affection. 
I have described the process from inflammation to ulceration, 
and from that to the empoisonment of the system, as often ex¬ 
ceedingly slow ; but, as in the other constitutional affections 
produced through the means of the absorbents, it is sometimes 
quickened almost beyond belief. If the exciting cause of inflam¬ 
mation in the membranes has more than usual power, or, from 
debility or previous irritability, the membrane is predisposed 
easily and violently to take on inflammatory action, the disease 
will run its course in four-and-twenty hours; but the same ap¬ 
pearances are presented, the same process is clearly marked : the 
ulcers follow the direction of the absorbents along the septum, 
and along the membrane generally, and along the trachea to the 
lungs. It is the same disease, but differing only, yet sometimes 
strangely differing, in the intensity and rapidity of propagation. 
M. Dupuy's Notioti of Glanders. —M. Dupuy, and after him 
many of the French veterinarians, entertain a curious notion of 
the nature of glanders. He calls it “ a tuberculous disease” 
He supposes that innumerable small, firm, grey, bodies, miliary 
tubercles, are formed on the upper part of the septum, or in 
some of the sinuses, particularly the frontal ones. That for a 
certain period of time they remain unchanged, and during that 
time do not in the slightest degree interfere with the health of 
the animal; nor are there any means of ascertaining their exis¬ 
tence, except that by their presence as foreign bodies they so far 
irritate the membrane on which they grow, as to cause a some¬ 
what increased secretion from that portion of the membrane. 
They continue in this state an indefinite period of time. He 
thinks that he has traced their existence for five or six successive 
years. At length from some unknown cause they become disor¬ 
ganized ; they soften and ulcerate, and then we have the chancre 
of glanders. These chancres sometimes penetrate through the 
perichondrium and the cartilage, the periosteum and the bone; 
they discharge a poisonous fluid, a portion of which is absorbed : 
then the whole frame becomes affected, and the disease may be 
communicated to others. 
This theory is very ingenious, but it is deficient in proof. I 
am not aware of any English veterinarian who has detected these 
tubercles; and of one thing I am certain, that, if they exist, the 
disease is contagious long before they proceed to suppuration. 
GENERAL VIEW OF GLANDERS. 
Now then, gentlemen, we can conveniently pause for awhile. 
We are arrived at a point whence we can command much of the 
