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167
GLANDERS.
Some alarm was felt in the Metropolis during the summer
owing to what was supposed to be an unusual prevalence of
glanders and farcy, related diseases of horses which are communicable
to man. It was, in fact, due to the death of a man—
the disease is always mortal—that so much attention had been
given to the subject, and it was a specially regrettable feature
of the case that there appeared to be reason for believing
that the malady had been spread through the medium of the
street drinking troughs,' so benevolently provided for alleviating
the thirst of animals. The primary local manifestation of
glanders in the horse is exhibited in the form of ulceration
of the mucous membrane of the nostrils; and it is believed
that the discharges therefrom, passing into the trough, when
the nose is plunged into the water, may be the means of
infecting animals subsequently using the trough. This risk
would be diminished, if not removed, were the surface outlet
of the water so arranged that a slow stream should carry off
the floating mucus almost always to be seen after a horse has
been drinking. The use of the troughs was discontinued for
a time, a course which was doubtless the cause of much
animal suffering.* At some of the standposts in the streets,
buckets for watering horses were provided—a plan which
doubtless diminished the danger in question. It cannot, however,
be said that a glandered horse using a bucket, in these
circumstances, could not infect it and so spread the disease.
It is just possible, moreover, that there may be, in either case,
a measure of danger for children, as I was credibly informed
that children had been seen drinking water out of the buckets,
as they might easily do out of the troughs also. Those who
wish to secure perfect safety—assuming that the danger of
the troughs referred to is real—might do so by following the
example of your Vestry, whose horses are supplied with water
* The insanitary wooden water-troughs to be seen in the outskirts of the Metropolis, at public
house doors, and which are far more likely to be the means of spreading disease than those referred
to in the report, were, of course, not closed or interfered with in any way.