PATHOLOGICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 
519 
mucous membrane was highly vascular. A small abscess con¬ 
taining a caseous pus appeared at the point of inoculation. 
These lesions are also sufficient to characterize glanders. 
The chancres of the larynx and of the nasal cavities cannot be 
ignored. 
These experiments of control are, consequently, entirely con¬ 
firmatory in their results of those of Messrs. Bouchard, Capitan 
and Charrier: Glanders is a microbian disease. 
This conclusion, which may now be said to be definitively ad¬ 
mitted, the result, as it is, of experiments many times repeated 
and always with the same results, reflects a most important light 
upon a question of the greatest interest in the domains of 
pathological anatomy and physiology, by giving to the most im¬ 
portant lesions their real signification, and bringing their true 
evolution within the scope of our clear comprehension. 
The old pathological anatomy, and by this I mean that of 
yesterday, was able only to observe certain facts, whose meaning 
continued unknown, from want of this great conception of the 
microbian nature of the disease which we possess to-day. It said : 
glanders is characterized anatomically by disseminated lesion, 
under the form of nodular tumors, abscesses or tubercles, accord¬ 
ing to its nature, in the lungs, the liver, the spleen, the testicles, 
etc. It is characterized, moreover, by ulcerative lesions scattered 
upon the membrane of the respiratory tract, from the nostrils to 
the bronchial divisions. It also showed lesions of the glands, 
corresponding with those of the teguments and [of the parenchy¬ 
matous structures, etc. 
But why this dissemination of the lesions ? Why the dis¬ 
tributing power seated upon the respiratory membrane ? Before 
the era of microbic discovery, upon which we have now entered, 
answers were given only by suppositions, and it must be admitted 
to the honor of the old observers, that at least one of these came 
very near the truth. It was that of the irritating thorn (epine 
irritante). This, probably, did not mean a substantial reality; 
it was rather a metaphor which was adopted by those who wanted 
to say that the trouble was like that which would result if at the 
seat of the lesions, if there were points of irritation which called 
