The Farmer's Veterinarian: A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Farm Stock

by Charles William Burkett

GLANDERS.

—A contagious disease peculiar to the horse, ass, and mule, and may be communicated to human beings, and also sometimes to carnivorous animals in menageries, by means of infected horse flesh, and also by means of inoculation to field mice, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, goats, rabbits, and sheep. Pigs are not readily susceptible and cattle appear to be immune. Like all diseases of a contagious or infectious character, glanders is due to a specific organism, known as the bacillus malleus.

The external manifestations of glanders differ and consequently the disease is spoken of as glanders or farcy, depending upon the symptoms presented. The disease is known as glanders when the horse suffering from it has a discharge from the nose, ulcers on the septum nasi (the partition dividing the nasal cavities) and enlarged submaxillary glands, and is known as farcy when the affected animal has farcy “buds” or ulcers on the skin, and corded lymphatic vessels running from one “bud” to another. In farcy, the corded lymphatics, “buds” and ulcers on the skin are very apt to be on the inside of one hind leg or the other, but may appear on the inside of a fore leg, or on the neck or body.

Farcy was, in olden times, thought to be a different disease from glanders, and was believed by many to be curable, while glanders has always been generally believed to be incurable, but it is now known that farcy is simply one manifestation of glanders. It has been found that a horse with glanders may give another farcy, and vice versa. Guinea pigs inoculated with the discharge from a glandered horse’s nose will develop glanders, and pure cultures of the glanders bacillus can be obtained from them, and in a similar way if guinea pigs are inoculated with the discharge from a sore on a horse with farcy glanders may be produced in these little experimental animals, and upon post mortem examination pure cultures of the glanders bacillus can be obtained from the lesions of the disease produced in them. Glanders and farcy may again be divided into two forms, acute and chronic glanders, and acute and chronic farcy.

In the acute form the disease develops rapidly, the lesions form more speedily and with greater rapidity than in the chronic form and the animal loses strength and condition and dies within the course of a few weeks, sometimes in the course of a week or two. It is not unusual to meet with an animal showing symptoms of both glanders and farcy, especially in the acute form.

In the chronic form the symptoms are not so well marked, and a horse may go for months keeping in fairly good condition and able to do its work, the disease developing very slowly, and at times showing a tendency to recover; yet such an animal is a source of danger to other horses, and also to the man taking care of him or driving him. A horse with chronic glanders, or farcy, may give the disease to another in an acute form, especially if the other one is more susceptible for some reason, such as a less strong constitution or being run down by hard work.

Post mortem examination of horses with glanders, or farcy, nearly always reveals the presence of glanders nodules or tubercles in the lungs, and, in many instances, there is no doubt but what a horse may have the tubercles of glanders in his lungs for some time before showing outward symptoms of the disease, and in many cases the primary lesions of the infection occur in the lungs. A horse with lung glanders may be a source of danger to other horses and cause disease in them and yet go unsuspected for some time. A case is said to have occurred in Boston a number of years ago where a hack horse lost eight successive mates with glanders; he was finally killed and his lungs were found to be full of glanders nodules, and yet he never showed any external symptoms of glanders. Such cases could be cited in large numbers if space permitted, but one example will answer.

BAD CASE OF GLANDERS

The farcy form is shown here. The animal has not long to live. Except for experimental purposes, every horse having glanders should be killed as soon as the disease is discovered.

A horse with lung glanders may have a little dry, spasmodic cough, may look somewhat unthrifty, and if the temperature were taken it might be slightly above normal, say, 101 degrees to 101¹⁄₂, the normal temperature being 100 degrees. Yet such an animal might do its work, last for a long time and not be suspected as a source of danger until several cases had occurred in the stable, for which it was difficult to account.

While a well-marked case of glanders or of farcy is not difficult of diagnosis, there are many obscure cases which escape detection for some time. If a horse has a well-marked discharge from one or both nostrils, with characteristic chancres visible upon the mucous membrane of the septum nasi, and hard enlarged submaxillary glands in the intermaxillary space, it is not a difficult matter to diagnose such a case, and any horseman ought to recognize it. The same is true of a well-marked case of farcy. When the lymphatic vessels on the inside of a leg, especially a hind leg, are swelled and corded, with a chain of farcy buds along their course, some of which have gathered and broken, leaving a discharging open ulcer in the skin, it is quite evident that the animal is suffering from farcy.

A peculiarity of glanders seems to be a tendency for the symptoms to appear on the left side; in many cases of glanders the discharge and ulceration is in the left nostril, and the left submaxillary gland is enlarged; and in a large number of the cases of farcy met with it is the left hind leg that shows the lesions of the disease. In obscure cases of glanders or farcy the diagnosis is not always so easy, even for experts, and then other methods for determining the trouble have to be resorted to. These are the guinea pig test and the mallein test. The guinea pig test consists of inoculating one or two of these little animals with the discharge from a suspected horse’s nose, or from a farcy sore. If they should develop glanders it would be proof positive that the suspected horse had this disease; if they do not develop glanders it is not always positive proof that the suspected horse is free from the disease. Sometimes more than one test is necessary, or another method of diagnosis may have to be resorted to. This is the mallein test.

Mallein is a product made from cultures of the glanders bacillus analogous to tuberculin as made from cultures of the tubercle bacillus, and is used for testing horses for glanders much as tuberculin is used for testing cattle for tuberculosis. A horse infected with glanders will react to a mallein test in much the same way as a cow infected with tuberculosis will react to the tuberculin test. It is not customary in some states to kill a horse that reacts to mallein unless it shows some clinical evidence of disease. All horses that show clinical evidence of glanders or farcy in some states are killed by the state authority, and the law requires persons knowing or suspecting cases of this kind to report in writing to the chief of the cattle bureau of the state board of agriculture or to the inspector of animals in the city or town where the disease is believed to exist, except in some cities where the city board of health has full charge of glanders and farcy. Anyone selling, removing, transporting, or concealing a horse knowing or having reasonable cause to believe it has glanders or farcy is in most states liable to a heavy penalty.

In stables where glanders exists, in some cases, all the horses are tested and divided; the reactors are separated from the non-reactors, and those that react are tested once a month until they cease to react, or show physical indications of glanders and are killed. Used in this way mallein seems to have a curative effect on incipient cases, and has been very successfully used in freeing infected stables from the disease. When a horse is killed because it has glanders or farcy the stall should be thoroughly disinfected where it has been kept, as well as the harness, blankets, currycomb and other utensils, and anything that cannot be easily disinfected ought to be destroyed. Public watering troughs where the horse has been watered should be emptied and cleaned out, and the blacksmith ought to disinfect his shop where the horse was shod.

There are various diseases that may be taken for glanders or farcy, and there have also been numerous instances where glanders has been taken for something else; for instance, chronic nasal catarrh. What many old-time veterinarians used to call chronic nasal catarrh or nasal gleet, were, in many instances, if not in nearly all, cases of chronic glanders, and when one of these cases of nasal gleet was rounded up in a locality, glanders disappeared in that neighborhood.

A horse with a chronic discharge from the nose as the result of a decayed tooth may sometimes be mistaken for a case of glanders, and also a horse with distemper or strangles; but the latter generally recovers soon, and in strangles the gland under the jaw softens and breaks and discharges while in glanders the gland remains firm and hard and generally not sensitive to manipulation.

There is a disease that has been troublesome in Pennsylvania and parts of Ohio the last two years called suppurative lymphangitis or epizootic lymphangitis, which may be mistaken for farcy, but animals suffering from it do not react to mallein, and guinea pigs inoculated with the discharges do not develop glanders. There is not much glanders in the Eastern states, except in the cities, and the disease is not of a great deal of interest to farmers, except to avoid purchasing animals with it at some of the unreliable sales stables. Where a case occurs on a farm, except on some market gardener’s farm near a city, it is found, as a rule, that the horse was purchased at some unscrupulous dealer’s stable in the city, and, in some instances, other horses on the farm are infected, and the farmer not only loses his new acquisition, but has two or three other horses killed besides that have become infected.

Farmers buying new horses at city sales stables ought to endeavor to deal with only reputable concerns, and to avoid cheats. It is well to remember that a person cannot get something for nothing, and it is not likely that anyone can buy a horse for $50 to $75 because it is afraid of elevated railroad trains that would otherwise be worth $300 to $500, or because a widow lady wants a good home for her late husband’s old pet. Anyone buying horses from a fake coal company, or a humbug ice company, or an unknown express company that is just going out of business, is liable to invite a serious disease to his farm.