198 MR. youatt’s veterinary lectures. 
brane to take on this peculiar inflammatory action from causes 
that would otherwise be harmless and ineffective. Weeks, and 
months, and years, may intervene between the predisposing 
cause and the actual evil; but at length the whole frame may 
become excited or debilitated in many a way, and then this most 
debilitated portion of it first yields to the attack. The truth is 
that this membrane, from its vascularity and its sensibility, is 
always disposed enough to take on inflammatory action; and it 
only wants a little of our unnatural treatment of the horse, to 
render it the certain, ultimate, victim, whatever be the part pri¬ 
marily attacked. 
Hereditary Predisposition .—There is one cause of glanders 
that has not been sufficiently estimated—hereditary predisposi¬ 
tion. This is a doctrine stoutly denied I know by some, to 
whom 1 should be disposed to yield much deference. It has 
been but lately admitted by any; but, once admitted, it is gain¬ 
ing new advocates every day. There is scarcely a disease that 
does not “ run in the stock.” Human surgeons have long ad- 
mitted this, and veterinary surgeons, in spite of old prepos¬ 
sessions, are compelled to yield their consent. It is useless to 
quibble about terms ;—there is that in the structure of various 
parts, or their disposition to be affected by certain influences, 
which perpetuates in the offspring the diseases of the sire; and 
thus contraction, ophthalmia, roaring, are decidedly hereditary: 
and so in glanders. This is a very important subject for considera¬ 
tion. It concerns us in our practice. It much more concerns 
our employers, and we should endeavour to convince them that 
it does. M. Dupuy relates some decisive cases. A mare on 
dissection exhibited every appearance of glanders; her filly, who 
resembled her in form, and in her vicious propensities, died 
glandered at four years and a half old. A second and a third 
mare, and their foals, presented the same fatal proof that glan¬ 
ders was hereditary. I may be told that it is possible that these 
three foals might have contracted the malady from the same un¬ 
known causes to which the dam owed her disorder. I have 
nothing to do with mere possibilities. A thousand dreams, wild 
as imagination ever created, may be possible; but when I have 
three foals dying of the disease by which their dams were de¬ 
stroyed, and one of them evidently inheriting the form and the 
character of the dam, I see the strong probability of an here¬ 
ditary predisposition ; and, coupling this with the fact that Tip¬ 
perary was overrun with the blind progeny of Chanticleer, and 
that it took many years to eradicate the roaring with which 
Major Wilson’s horse had infected the best breeds of the coun¬ 
try, the probability assumes almost the form of certainty. 
