I 
CAUSE OF GLANDERS. 
139 
the constitution in the way that they have described, but suf¬ 
ficiently productive of evil. The often-respired air, and the gases 
extricated in the putrefactive fermentation of the filth of the 
closed and neglected stable, are depressive, perhaps, rather than 
stimulating—they are productive of low and typhoid diseases 
rather than of acute ones; and they produce their first, their 
grand, almost their only effect, on that mucous membrane, 
among the sinuosities and convolutions of which they wind, and 
by which, too, they are arrested and absorbed; or, if the consti¬ 
tution suffers, it is through the medium of this membrane, this 
frequent, prevailing, but little suspected, inlet of infection and 
disease. The membrane which we know does arrest the ammo- 
niacal gas, so that scarcely an atom of it reaches the larynx, 
arrests likewise these deleterious vapours; but it suffers sadly in 
the discharge of this all-important function, and is disposed for 
low and typhoid inflammation, degenerating into, or perhaps 
constituting, glanders. Therefore it is that the foul stable is 
the very hot-bed, not of pneumonia, but of glanders; for it is 
the membrane of the nose, far more than that of the lungs, 
which is exposed to its fatal influence. 
On this account is the paramount importance of free ven¬ 
tilation in the stable. We owe every thing here to Professor 
Coleman. While the cavalry barracks, forty years ago, were 
continually thinned by this equine pest (and I have heard that 
in one of the depots, at the close even of the Peninsular war, 
several hundreds of horses were condemned in one morning), it is 
a disease now of comparatively rare occurrence among our troops. 
Agreeing in the general effect, and thankful for the result of 
ventilation, I am not disposed to cavil much, even when the 
principle is pushed to a somewhat extravagant extent. I can 
understand the good of it with reference to the disease now under 
consideration. These gases impinge upon the Schneiderian 
membrane, and, like the ammoniacal gases of the stable, are 
arrested and absorbed by it, and have their debilitating effect in 
the production of glanders. But when I am told that this want 
of ventilation is the cause of rabies in the dog and the rot in 
sheep, I do wonder a little. That wonder ceases when I con¬ 
sider how prone our best physiologists and pathologists have 
been to push their favourite theories too far; and that even the 
immortal Jenner, upon subjects not altogether dissimilar, and 
having reference to some of our domestic quadrupeds, rode his 
hobby-horse farther and more wildly. 
Comparison of different Stables .—Want of cleanliness and 
ventilation are the grand sources of glanders; the latter actin 
to a certain extent; the former far more influential, but derivin 
be fcc 
