GLANDERS
—is, perhaps, without exception, the most dreadful, and certainly destructive, disease to which the horse is incident. No exertions have been wanting on the part of the most eminent professional men (particularly in France) to discover the means of successfully counteracting the justly-dreaded virulence of this disorder; but hitherto with so little the appearance of progress, that it is almost an invariable custom to render the subject an immediate VICTIM to DEATH, so soon as he is ascertained to have become the VICTIM of DISEASE. There are never wanting SPECULATORS, or SPECULATIVE WRITERS, so long as "a doubt remains to hang a loop upon;" and many of these both speak and write as prompted by their pecuniary sensations, and the sale of the NOSTRUM it is their personal interest to promote. These, of course, promulgate not the probability, but the certainty, of cure, and may, in so doing, possibly prey upon the credulity of those who are equally strangers to the origin of this disease, its progress, its effects, or its termination.
After the great variety of opinions which have taken place; after all the investigations made by every class of the most diligent inquirers in anatomical dissections, as well as by various other means, three facts are incontrovertibly established: first, that the disease is INFECTIOUS; secondly, that it is CURABLE; and lastly, that the LUNGS of every HORSE dying under the disorder, or killed during its progress, have been either partially, or totally, destroyed. This demonstrated beyond the power of contradiction, what does it prove? Why, very clearly, to the judicious and scientific, who are inquisitive to experience, and open to conviction, that this disorder is in direct affinity to the PULMONARY CONSUMPTION of the HUMAN SPECIES; but that the horse having no means of throwing off the morbid matter by expectoration, as is the case with us, Nature, in her strong and inexplicable efforts for relief, propels the putrid discharge through the nostrils of the animal; whereas with the HUMAN FRAME, the wasting of the lungs passes through, and is discharged by, the mouth; and this, to the experienced practitioner, and learned inquirer, will hold forth the most unequivocal and satisfactory proof, that the GLANDERS is a virulent CONSUMPTION of THE LUNGS, by the corrosive property of which discharge (become inveterate) the glandular passages are proportionally affected.
Much judicious observation, and professional knowledge, is requisite to discriminate between this disease, and others bearing a part of its appearances: many horses are too hastily deemed GLANDERED, which are not so; and others as ignorantly said to be labouring under A COLD, and its consequence, till a whole stable has been affected, and every horse lost. The distinguishing traits are a discharge from one or both nostrils, of a viscid, slimy, and fœtid matter, having a kind of greasy tinge upon the surface: it is glutinous in its property, hanging to, and becoming dry and barky, upon the internal edges of the nostrils: it is white at the beginning, and grows darker in proportion to the duration and inveteracy of the disease; it becomes yellow, ash-colour, green, and lastly, tinged with blood, at which time, as well as before, it is dreadfully offensive: previous to this stage, indurated tumefactions have taken place under the jaws, the frame is daily more and more emaciated, the eyes sink gradually in their orbits, the appetite totally ceases, the body becomes almost motionless, seeming a mere lifeless trunk, till it falls to the ground a mass of perfect putrefaction.