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

by Charles William Burkett

—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.