That the foregoing observations are correctly based, is proved by the pest becoming less common as the public have morally improved—only, why leave so immediate an evil to be cured by so slow a process? Years ago, an affected horse, led through the streets, was an almost hourly occurrence. Since that time we have improved, and such sights are no longer common. Therefore the morality here alluded to is not of limited meaning. It implies improvements in drainage, and all those innovations by which life has been made more secure. He is the truest benefactor of mankind who lessens the ills to which existence is exposed.
Glanders is the phthisis of the horse. Phthisis is, in some countries, esteemed even more dangerously contagious than glanders and farcy are in England admitted to be. Man, however, employs a handkerchief; the plates off which he feeds are washed. The manger is never cleansed; and the discharge soils the boards on which the corn reposes.
The lungs of very many horses, however, which have perished of the pest, will exhibit numerous tubercles; these, in the human subject, are considered conclusive evidence as to the existence of phthisis.
THE LUNGS OF A HORSE WHICH HAD PERISHED FROM GLANDERS.
(A portion of the left lung has been excised, to show the ravage of the disease.)
By some practitioners glanders is esteemed a purely local disorder. In books, schools, and elsewhere, the running from the nose has been pointed out as the disease itself; and the situation of the affection is said to be the frontal sinuses—hence the dependence placed in various caustic injections forced up the nostrils.
A very little reflection will, however, enable the reader to take a more extended view of the malady. When glanders exists, a staring coat generally declares the skin affected; and the customary termination of the disorder—farcy and dropsy—proves more than the surface of the body to be implicated. The lungs—or, at all events, the air-passages—never escape. Loss of flesh and swelling of the glands demonstrate the absorbent system to be involved. Absence of spirit and inability to work, toward the close of the affection, are evidence the nervous system does not escape. The secretions are derived from the blood; and the blood, it has been shown, by a silly experiment, is capable of generating the malady. Their pallid aspect, after death, convinces us the muscles were far from healthy. Of all parts, perhaps, the abdominal contents are least diseased, though the marked decay of appetite does not favor such an opinion. What disease, then, can be considered a constitutional disorder, if one which involves so many and such various structures is to be regarded as a strictly local affection?
A horse, full of corn, and in the prime of health, if unfortunately inoculated with the virus of glanders, generally has the disease in its acutest form: the animal may be dead by the expiration of a week. Other quadrupeds, in which the disorder is provoked by natural causes, may, on the contrary, exhibit glanders in the most chronic shape. If the exciting cause has a strong constitution to act upon—especially if the horse, soon after imbibing the poison, be removed to easier work or a more dry abode—the malady may exist for years in a subtle, undeveloped form. A thin discharge only may run, irregularly, from one nostril. At times no fluid may appear, nor is the liquid ever copious. One of the kernels, or lymphatic glands, situated between the branches of the channel, may be more or less fixed. But, otherwise, the horse is active, full of fire, and exhibits nothing to excite suspicion. During all this time the creature may be endowed with a fatal power of communicating the disease. Horses, having received the taint from such a source, may die within the week, while the cause of the mortality eats well, works well, delights the master's eye by its thriving appearance, and in such a condition even may exist for years.
