GLANDERS

IN

MAN AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS,

BY

L. F. ANDREWS,

SECRETARY OF THE

STATE BOARD OF HEALTH

FOR THE YEAR 1880.

GLANDERS IN MAN AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS.

The frequency of reports from various sections of the State of the presence of glanders among horses, leads to the conclusion that its prevalence is alarmingly wide-spread, as the result of a want of knowledge of the disease, and the primary symptoms by which it may be detected before infection has been had by a large number of animals. The author of this paper makes no pretension to veterinary knowledge, or claim for new facts to those already existing relative to glanders. His only purpose is to compile the most important and wellestablished facts, that the public may have a better understanding and appreciation of the nature of this, one of the most loathsome and dangerous diseases known. It only needs to be fully known to be avoided with horror.

HOW TO DETECT GLANDERS IN HORSES.

Dr. H. J. Detmers, V. S., of Chicago, in his report on the Investigation of Diseases of Domestic Animals, to the United States Department of Agriculture, gives the following definition of the different forms of glanders, which appears in a special report, No. 12, of that Department, 1879, page 257:

Glanders is a contagious disease sui generis of animals belonging to the genus equus. It has usually a chronic course, can be communicated by means of its contagion to several other species of animals and to human beings, and must be considered incurable if fully developed. The principal seat of the morbid process is usually in the mucous membrane of the nasal cavities. Three main symptoms, viz., discharges from the nose, swelling of the submaxillary lymphatic glands, and particularly ulcers of a peculiar, chancrous character in the mucuous membrane of the nose, characterize glanders, and are, therefore, of the greatest diagnostic value. Wherever these three symptoms, or only two of them, are present and fully developed, there the diagnosis is secured. But unfortunately this is not always the case; sometimes two, and even all three, principal symptoms may be wanting, and still the horse may be affected with glanders. In such a case the seat of the morbid process is not in the nasal cavities, but further on in the respiratory passages, or even in the lungs. Several such cases have come to my observation, and have also been described by others, especially by Professor Gerlach. In still other cases, in which the disease might be called "external glanders," but is better known by the name of "farcy," the morbid process has its principal, or even its exclusive, seat

in the subcutaneous connective tissue and in the skin or cutis. The late Professor Gerlach, in his treatise on Glanders, published in the "Jahresbericht der Konniglichen Thierarzneischule zu Hannover, 1868, discriminates, in consequence of these differences, three distinct forms: Nasal or common glanders, pulmonal glanders, and farcy. As such a division of glanders proper into nasal pulmonal glandersfarcy is described by every author under a separate head-facilitates considerably the diagnosis, and explains also at once why just those symptoms which are usually looked upon as most characteristic remain sometimes imperfectly developed, or entirely unobserved, it will be convenient to adopt Gerlach's classification.

1. NASAL GLANDERS.-This form is that which is most common, best known, and characterized by the three principal symptoms which have been mentioned. (a.) The discharge from the nose, although the most conspicuous of those three symptoms, is really the one which is the least characteristic, or of the least diagnostic value, because several other diseases of the respiratory organs are also attended with discharges from the nose, which are more or less similar. It is true, the discharge in glanders possesses some properties which, if considered as a total, are characteristic and are not found combined in any other disease; but the difficulty is, one or another of these qualities is not always sufficiently developed. Consequently, if the two other principal symptoms, the swelling of the lymphatic glands and the ulcers in the nose, are absent or not observed, the discharges from the nose are seldom characteristic enough to serve as the sole basis of a reliable diagnosis. The same are frequently one-sided, and, according to most authors, oftener from the left than from the right nostril. According to my experience, they are nearly, if not quite, as often from the right as from the left nasal cavity, and, at any rate, just as often from both nostrils as from one only, but always more abundant from one, either right or left, than from the other. At the beginning the discharges are usually thin, almost watery, frequently greenish, or somewhat similar in color to grass juice; afterward the same appear to be composed of two different fluids, one yellowish and watery and the other whitish and mucous. Still later the discharges become thicker, more sticky, exhibit frequently a mixture of different colors, are sometimes greenish, sometimes dirty white or grayish, contain not seldom streaks of blood, and, in advanced stages especially, particles of bone or cartilage. They have a great tendency to adhere to the borders of the nostrils and to dry there to dirty yellow-brownish crusts. As to quantity, the nasal discharges in glanders are seldom very copious, at least not as copious as in many other diseases-strangles, for instance. The quantity, however, varies. Sometimes, especially when the weather is warm and dry, the discharges may be very insignificant or be absent altogether, and, at other times, particularly if the weather is rough, wet, and cold, will increase in quantity and become comparatively abundant. Several authors have attached special importance to one or another of the various properties as something characteristic, by which the nasal discharges in glanders can be distinguished from those of other diseases, but, in reality, none of those properties are constant enough, or belong exclusively to glanders, to be alone of great diagnostic value. Solleysel and Kersting considered the stickiness as such a characteristic, but the discharges in strangles are frequently just as sticky. Pinter and Vilet relied upon the specific gravity; they found that the nasal discharges of glanders,