Glanders : a clinical treatise / by William Hunting.

  • Hunting, William, 1846-1913.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Glanders : a clinical treatise / by William Hunting. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    lent discharges of horses suffering from glanders and farcy ; that farcy and glanders were one disease ; that the virus could be destroyed by heat and dessication ; and that infection could be carried by harness or utensils, and more particularly by forage left in mangers from which diseased horses had fed. He also recognised a latent form of disease which might be infective, and warned against the danger from horses which had been apparently cured of farcy. It is sad to think of the losses which have since occurred, and which might largely have been prevented had the work of this excellent observer been accepted. Viborg, in 1797, knew practically all that was known about glanders up to the time of the discovery of the Bacillus mallei. In the 19th century, knowledge of glanders progressed slowly at first. Professor Coleman, who had succeeded St. Bel at the London Veterinary School, devoted much attention to glanders. He proved experimentally that farcy might be produced by inoculation of matter from acute glanders, and glanders by the inoculation of matter from farcy. He showed that the virus might exist in the blood by inducing glanders in a donkey through transfusion of blood from a glandered horse, and yet he held that the disease might originate without contagion. Youatt believed the disease to be strictly local for awhile, that then it caused ulcers, that the suppuration became malignant and thus affected the whole system. White, a retired army veterinary surgeon, who had entered upon private practice at Exeter, wrote in 1817 a very true account of the clinical behaviour of glanders, which he recognised as a contagious disease. White's last edition (1842), page 223, contains the following : Glanders is a contagious disease which is communicated by inoculation, or by swallowing the matter, and not by effluvia, proceeding from a glandered horse or a stable in which a glandered horse is, or has been kept. Blaine asserted that both glanders and farc}^ originate in contagion and that the disease is one sui generis.'' Professor Sewell in 1827, taught that the lungs were the original seat of disease, and the affection of the nose secondary. He believed that the miliary tubercles in the lung constitute the original disease.