Glanders

Glanders, Farcy, Equinia, a disease which especially affects the horse tribe, but occasionally occurs in man and some other animals. It is characterised by the appearance of nodules in the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract (particularly that of the nose), the lymphatic glands are also affected, and the skin is sometimes involved. (Farcy buds, see Farcy.) The nodules and tubercles shortly after their first appearance begin to break down, and ulcers are formed which exude a viscid purulent secretion. The onset of the disease is heralded by considerable febrile disturbance, and the animal affected becomes prostrate, and may die within a few days, more usually, however, after the lapse of a fortnight or three weeks. In the horse, and occasionally in man, the course of the malady is much prolonged, and these cases of chronic glanders are sometimes followed by recovery. Glanders has been in recent years shown to be a germ disease; the specific organism is called the bacillus mallei. Glanders is one of the diseases of animals that comes within the scope of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts. There is no doubt that much may be done in the way of preventing the spread of the malady from diseased to healthy animals (prompt removal and destruction of glandered horses, disinfection, etc.). The disease is especially prevalent in London at the present time (1893), sometimes as many as fifty horses being destroyed by it in the course of one week. The stamping out of the malady is of importance, not only on account of the ravages which it works in the horse tribe, but also to obviate the danger which the prevalence of the equine disease implies to stablemen, coachmen, and others, who are by the nature of their avocations brought into contact with horses.