GLANDERS.
Synonyms. Definition: Acute, infectious, microbian disease, often localized in lymph glands and plexuses of nose and air passages, etc.; with hyperplasia, degeneration, necrosis, liquefaction. Affects solipeds, and, by inoculation, man and all domestic animals save cattle, chickens and (usually) swine. Geographical distribution and historic notes: known in Ancient Greece; now where solipeds live and fresh subjects are exposed; Central Europe; great horse trade and movement; war, Franco-German, Napoleonic, Afghanistan, American Civil War, Boer War. Unknown in Australia. Susceptibility: solipeds, Guinea-pig, rabbit, goat, cat, dog, pigeon, sheep, and swine in low condition. Cattle, chickens, white and house mice, linnets, chaffinches, and frog immune. Microbe lives in frog in water at 86° F. Cause: Bacillus mallei. Accessory causes: trade in solipeds, mingling of sound and sick, crowding, common feeding and drinking troughs or buckets and racks, debility, low condition, starvation, overwork, damp, dark, draughty stables, carriage in transports or cars. Insular quarantined lands—Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand exempt. Bacteriology: Bacillus Mallei; 2 to 5μ by 0.5 to 1.4μ, nonmotile, ærobic grows in ordinary culture media, stains tardily but is easily bleached. Spores uncertain, easily killed by disinfectants, preserved in stables, does not grow in infusion of hay, straw or horse manure, lives 15 to 20 days in water; infection by coitus, and through placenta, by ingestion, by blood transfusion, through dust; microbe in all lesions and discharges, (unless sometimes in milk, sperm, etc.). Infection-atria: skin wound, mucosa, hair follicles, lungs. Forms: Acute, chronic, nasal, pulmonary, cutaneous (farcy), orchitic, arthritic, abdominal, occult. Symptoms: nasal; incubation, 3 to 5 days, languor, weariness, stiffness, horripilation, tremors, inappetence, thirst, hyperthermia, epiphora, snuffling, nasal discharge, serous, viscid, agglutinating, purulent, swollen alæ, violet mucosa, elevated spots and patches with central ulceration, may become confluent, and involve submucous tissues; submaxillary lymph glands swollen, nodular, not tender, non-suppurating, swollen (corded) facial lymphatics, from nose, eye or lymph glands; swellings, cutaneous and lymphatic in skin of limb or body, ulcers (farcy buds), deposits in throat or lungs; chronic cases; slow, indolent, persistent, nasal discharge—unilateral (or bilateral), viscid or not, nodules on mucosa with whitish centres or points; red areolæ, later ulceration, puckered white cicatricial lesions, submaxillary swelling, nodular, large or small, insensible; cutaneous cases; arthritis with lymphangitis, skin engorgement, corded lymphatics with ulcerating nodules, sanious discharge, intermuscular abscesses. Occult cases: lesions in internal organ;—cough, leucorrhœa, enlarged testicle, low condition, weakness, lack of endurance. Diagnosis: inoculation of male Guinea-pig in flank or peritoneum,—ulcer and orchitis, cat, dog, old soliped; mallein test,—swelling, involving lymphatics, fever, 1.5° to 2.5 F. and upward above normal, at 10th to 18th hour, lasting two days. Lesions: cell proliferation in nests in fibrous stroma, pea upward, central degeneration, fatty debris, ulcer or abscess, hyperplasia of lymph vessels, on nasal mucosa like sand-grains, peas, patches, centre grayish or yellowish, blood extravasation, necrotic degeneration, ulcer with ragged edges; fibroid degeneration—cicatricial lesion; lesions in guttural pouch or tube, larynx, trachea, bronchia; lungs—peribronchial, lobular or interlobular inflammation, cell proliferation in foci, degeneration—nodules—and caseation; skin,—cell proliferation, degeneration, rupture, fibroid hyperplasia of lymphatics, exudates in connective tissue; dependent lymph glands congested, hypertrophied, cell proliferation, caseation; lesions in pharynx, spleen, kidney, heart, brain, testicle, scrotum, mammæ, vagina, uterus, joints, bones; bone fragility. Glanders in swine, sheep, goat, rodent, dog, cat.
Synonyms. Malleus, Equinia, Farcy.
Definition. An acute infectious disease caused by the bacillus mallei, which tends to localize itself in the lymphatic glands and plexuses, especially of the nose and upper air passages but also in other parts of the body, where it produces a progressive hyperplasia, with a strong tendency to degeneration, necrosis, and liquefaction. It occurs casually in horses, asses, mules and other solipeds, and is communicable to man and all domestic animals except the bovine races, chickens, and, under ordinary circumstances, swine.
Geographical Distribution. Glanders (Malis) appears to have prevailed in asses in Greece as noted by Aristotle. Its contagious prevalence in horses is recorded by Absyrtus in the time of Constantine, and again by Vegetius Renatus in 381 A.D. At the present time its existence is almost coextensive with the equine family, but its prevalence is in a direct ratio with the facilities for the infection of fresh subjects. In the central countries of Europe where the equine population is greatest and where there is the most extensive trade and movement among horses it secures the greatest relative number of victims. War with its constant opportunities for infection, in crowded cavalry and artillery stables and the successive changing of place, tends greatly to enhance its ravages. Thus in the German army it rose from 966 to 2058 per 100,000 per annum in the year of the Franco-German war; in Spain it was practically unknown until the Napoleonic war in the Peninsula, but after this it proved a veritable scourge; in Hindostan it was hardly known until the Sepoy rebellion yet its ravages greatly hampered the army movement in Afghanistan in 1879; and in the United States it became very prevalent in the armies during the Civil War of 1861–4, and was widely scattered over the whole country on the sale of the army horses and mules. Since that time, as before, it has been most prevalent in the car stables of the great cities, though it has also gained a wide extension in many great horsebreeding establishments in the Rocky Mountain region, where however it proves much less destructive than in the East.
It is unknown in Australia, whence it is excluded by a rigid system of quarantine.
Susceptibility of Different Animals. Horses, asses and mules are the most susceptible, and it is only exceptionally that the disease is contracted casually outside the class of solipeds. The Guinea pig and rabbit are susceptible to glanders in the order named and the former is especially available for experimental diagnostic inoculations. The goat, cat and dog sometimes contract the disease from living in stables with glandered horses, but infection is much more certain when they are inoculated. The pigeon is also susceptible. In the dog the disease is rarely fatal, but the ulcerations tend to heal in 14 days and recovery ensues. In sheep and goats too, many cases recover though in other cases an internal infection takes place followed by death. Swine are comparatively insusceptible, but they may be successfully inoculated when in ill health and low condition. (Spinola, Cadeac and Malet). Cattle and chickens have uniformly proved refractory even on inoculation. White and house mice and rats, have proved immune, also linnets and chaffinches and the frog at ordinary temperature. If however the frog is placed in water at 30° C., he may be successfully inoculated and, though it does not prove fatal, the bacillus may be found in the blood and tissues after a lapse of 50 days.
Etiology. As already stated this disease is due to the presence of a microörganism, the bacillus mallei. Many secondary causes, however, contribute to its propagation. The activity of movement and commingling of horses has been already noticed. Crowding in close yards where the animals bite each other, snort out the virulent discharges on each other and eat and drink from the same troughs, leads to a rapid extension. Even on the western ranges where the disease tends to be mild, Billings observed a deadly extension when yarded during winter storms. Debility from chronic ill health, starvation, overwork and damp, dark, draughty stables, is so conducive to the disease that it was at one time considered as the sole cause. Close confinement in impure air is at once a cause of increased susceptibility and a means of concentration and transmission of the poison. Hence confinement, between decks, of military and other horses, carried by sea, is a source of wide extensions. On the other hand insular places from which strange horses are excluded or into which they are admitted under careful inspection and quarantine have succeeded in preserving immunity. Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand are examples.
Bacillus Mallei. Christot and Kiener claimed to have found a bacillus in the lesions of glanders in 1868. In 1881 bacilli were found by Bouchard in a glander abscess in man, and these were cultivated in vitro and inoculated in a number of animals, by Capitan and Charrin in 1882. Independently in the same year (1882) Löffler and Schütz discovered the bacillus, cultivated it in vitro, and successfully inoculated it on animals. The microbe is rod-shaped, 2 to 5μ long, by 0.5 to 1.4μ thick, the same length as the bacillus tuberculosis but thicker. It is nonmotile, ærobic (facultative anærobic) and grows readily in a variety of culture media at a temperature of 37° C. On neutral bouillon of the flesh of horse, ox, calf or chicken with or without peptone, it grows readily, producing cloudiness in one or two days. In peptonized gelatine it forms a whitish flocculent mass. On glycerine agar with milk it forms in 48 hours a milk white layer, changing to yellowish brown. On potato it forms long slender filaments, in yellow, viscous, glistening colonies, changing to fawn and darker. It grows best at 35° to 39° C. and growth ceases below 25° C., and above 42° C. It stains tardily in aniline colors, and not at all by Gram’s or Weigert’s, but will readily take Kuhne’s stain prepared as follows: take of phenic acid in solution (5:100) 50cc., absolute alcohol 10cc., and 1 to 2 grammes methylin blue. The stain is very easily bleached by acid, differing in this from the bacillus tuberculosis. For decolorizing Löffler recommends 10cc. distilled water, 2 drops of strong sulphuric acid, and 1 drop of a 5 per cent. solution of oxalic acid. Sections should be left in this not longer than 5 seconds. The bacillus often appears granular, and unequally stained in its different parts. It may be difficult of discovery in old standing lesions of horses, but comes out clearly in recent lesions of experimental cases in Guinea pigs and donkeys.
Baumgarten claims sporulation but this is uncertain.