Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1874 — Glanders. [ARTICLE]

Glanders.

This terrible disease is more prevalent at the present time, perhaps, than ever before. We call it “ terrible” becjause it is always fatal to animals afflicted with it, and also to men who become poisoned by contact ol’ its virus with a cut or sore or bruise, and the death following is a most painful one. Why is it now so prevalent? Doubtless in some degree as a sequence to the epizootic of the last two years. The horses were left in a condition rendering them more susceptible to contagious diseases. and more liable to suffer from unfavorable circumstances. We know that men, in a certain condition of their system, will take malarious or infectious diseases when at other times they can be exposed without harm. So we believe that bad ventilation of stables, improper food, or too little of it, overworking, want of care generally, will render a horse liable to glanders or farcy at the present time wheu before the epizootic lie would have been exempt. And what is the condition of many of the stablesin this State? Is there such an atmosphere within them as any animal ought to breathe? Is it not. in many instances, almost suffocating to men who enter them? What would induce the owners of horses to sleep one night in the average stall, even if they had a hair mattress under them? Would not the ammonia from the stall seriously affect the eyes and ears of the sleeper? And vet we keep .pur horses there day after dav and night after night. Why should the bedding, soaked and filthy as it often is, be placed under the crib*in the morning, compelling the horse to breathe its effluvia ,all day? Howmany stalls are used month after month, without being washed out Or purified with any disinfectant? Is it strange 1 that horses suffer from “ pink-eye and "cough and glanders”? It is a question which some people ask, if the epizootic of 1872 was not sent to make us appreciate the value of horses, and the latter forms of it to warn us to take better care of them. We do not propose to attempt to describe glanders or farcy, but only rec- j ommend owners who have any suspicion j of these diseases to apply to a good veterinary. If the horse is affected with either of them, he will order the animal killed, and the stall where he stood to be thoroughly purified by carbolic acid and : whitewash, and the harness and everything that has been worn by or U6ed j about the horse to be thoroughly i cleansed. As the disease is both contagious and infectious, if the virus from a glandered horse conies in contact with a cut. sore or bleeding surface on another horse, or if a horse is confined in the same stable with one having the glanders, the disease is liable to be communicated. We repeat, that the disease is a dangerous one, and every means should he taken by everybody to prevent its spread, by treating, * feeding and their j

horses correctly, by keeping their stables Clean and with good ventilation, and by immediately killing horses having the disease.— Our Dumb Animal*. —’