Special report on diseases of the horse / by Drs. Pearson [and others].

Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Special report on diseases of the horse / by Drs. Pearson [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    627/690 (page 541)
    lar murmur or the large area of dullness on percussion over the sides of the chest which belongs to simple pneumonia. Where there is doubt as to the diagnosis the mallein or the inocula - tion test may be employed. The mallein test is made by injecting mallein (a sterilized extract from a culture of glanders bacilli) beneath the skin. If the horse has glanders there results a febrile reaction and a swelling at the point of injection. If the horse does not have glan- ders the mallein has no effect or, at most, it produces a slight swelling only at the point of injection. The inoculation test consists in the inoc- ulation of a susceptible animal (usually a guinea pig) with some of the suspected discharge from the nose or a farcy ulcer. If the material is properly used, and if ifc contains bacilli of glanders, the experimental animal will develop the disease. Neither of these tests should be put into use excepting by a competent veterinarian. The postmortem examination of the lungs shows that the pneumonia of glanders is a lobular, V-shaped pneumonia scattered through the lungs and caused b}^ the specific inflammatory process taking place at the divergence of the smaller air tubes of the lungs. In some cases of acute glanders the formation of nodules may so irritate the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract and cause such a profuse discharge of mucopurulent or purulent matter that the specific character of the original discharge is entirely masked. In this case, too, the submax- illary space may for a few days so swell as to resemble the edematous inflamed glands of strangles, equine variola, or laryngitis. This con- dition is especially apt to be marked in an acute outbreak of glanders in a drove of mules. Cases of chronic farcy and glanders, if not destroyed, may live in a depraved condition until the animal dies from general emaciation and anemia, but in the majority of cases, from some sudden exposure to cold, it develops an acute pneumonia or other simple inflammatory trouble which starts up the latent disease and the animal has acute glanders. In the ass, mule, and plethoric horses, acute glanders usually termi- nates by lobular pneumonia. In other cases the general symptoms may subside. The symptoms of pneumonia gradually disappear, the temperature lowers, the pulse becomes slower, the ulcers heal, leaving small indurated cicatrices, and the animal may return to apparent health, or may at least be able to do a small amount of work with but a few symptoms of the disease remaining in a chronic form. During the attack of acute glanders the inflammation of the nasal cavities fre- quently spreads into the sinuses or air cells, which are found in the forehead and in front of the eyes on either side of the face, and cause abscesses of these cavities, which may remain as the only visible symptom of the disease. An animal which has recovered from a case of acute glanders, like the animals which are affected by chronic