292 
ON THE TRANSMISSION OF DISEASES 
horse. They thought it strange, if the transmission was possible, 
that the annals of veterinary medicine did not contain a single 
case of it. All the editors of the Recueil de Medecine Veterinaire 
shared in the same opinion. However ingenious might be the 
discussion, which turned on one fact alone, nothing conclusive 
could be drawn from it respecting the communication of glanders 
from the horse to the human being*. 
For a long time veterinary surgeons have maintained that 
glanders and farcy have many traits of resemblance—are pro¬ 
duced by similar causes, and are, in fact, kindred diseases. M. 
Renault has lately maintained this ground in the Recueil de 
Medecine VHerinaire. I confess, however, that the two maladies 
appear to me to present altogether different symptoms. If they 
exist at the same time in the same animal, yet each pursues its 
own course. The one is ordinarily cured by nature or by art,— 
the other bids defiance to all medical treatment. There is only 
one method of demonstrating the identity of these diseases, and 
that is by repeating the experiments of Coleman and Withe, 
who produced farcy by inoculation with the matter of glanders, 
and glanders by inoculation with that of farcy. One difficulty, 
however, opposes itself here—farcy and glanders have lost the 
contagious character which they once possessed; at least, this 
has been said and repeated, and we have been taught to 
believe it. 
I am of the opinion of M. Renault, and those who with him dis¬ 
believe in the contagion of chronic glanders; but as for farcy, I 
cannot agree with him, or rather, I am compelled to acknow¬ 
ledge that it is contagious. My opinion is based on the experi¬ 
ments on the effect of inoculation with farcy matter, made at 
Lyons by Gohier, and by which he established, in the most positive 
manner, the contagious nature of this disease; and also on experi¬ 
ments of my own, which I made in 1833, on some horses belong¬ 
ing to the 7th Regiment of Artillery, when I was in garrison at 
Lyons. 
On the first of September in that year, I took some matter from 
a horse affected with chronic farcy, which I introduced under the 
epidermis of three glandered horses (in the second degree) by 
means of many punctures on the side of the neck and under the 
jaws. On the second, there was not the slightest appearance of 
inflammation, and the minute wounds had cicatrized. On the 
• Seethe review of Dr. Rayer’s publication on this subject in the first and 
second numbers of The Veterinarian for the present year. We hope, 
in the next or following number, to be enabled to present our readers with 
the post-mortem appearances, accurately coloured, which were found on the 
dissection of this poor fellow. 
