EDITORIAL. 
37 ;i 
(1) Evidently glanders can be communicated through in¬ 
jection of the digestive canal. 
(2) Malleine will, by its ordinary manifestations, indicate 
the presence of the disease a few days after the injection. 
(3) If the thermal reaction diminishes after having been 
characterized, or is only lower than in ordinary cases, it indi¬ 
cates that a process of recovery is going on. 
(4) Complete absence of thermal reaction, after its full de¬ 
velopment or after a gradual diminution, means death of the 
bacillus—means recovery. 
It is, then, no longer the lesions only which tell if latent 
glanders exist or not, but malleine, which affirms their living or 
of their dead conditions, of their characteristic and dangerous or 
their inert and harmless nature. 
* 
^ * 
There may not be a great practical value in these results, 
and from them it must not be concluded that any case of glan¬ 
ders is curable, nor that attempts at treatment will be justified 
in any form. Well-developed cases, with the characteristic 
chancre, gland and discharge, must (for the present, at least) be 
excluded from the class of those in which malleine can have any 
effect. It is only with those in which external signs are absent, 
where the disease is latent, in animals which are in good con¬ 
dition, and which can receive the best feeding and have the 
benefit of long rest in the fresh open air, that an attempt might 
be undertaken ; but in the presence of the long required rest, loss 
of work, and possible failure, the practical result can be looked 
for only in very exceptional cases. Prof. Nocard has shown me 
one animal which demanded no less than twenty months of treat¬ 
ment and observation before he was pronounced cured. 
* 
There remains one point of importance ; and that is, is re¬ 
covery temporary or radical ? Has the rest, good feeding, free¬ 
dom in the pure fresh air only partially destroyed the vitality of 
the bacillus ; and will it not resume it and its activity as soon 
as the horse is returned to hard work, privations, etc. ? 
