Extinction. Exclusion, in Australia, New Zealand, English army.
Occision of infected, and disinfection of stables, harness, vehicles,
utensils, manure and other infected things, mallein diagnosis;
attendants should avoid handling suspicious horses, except with sound
hands, and disinfect latter. Sheep living in horse stables, tested
before slaughter, or inspected after. Malleinization on Plains and in
high, dry air, in secluded herds: less hopeful elsewhere. Mallein test
for all solipeds from glanders districts, and imported horses.
Treatment illegal in many states, so that justice would require
extinction with indemnities. Successful on high tablelands and
mountains. Demands careful segregation and disinfection. Acute cases
always hopeless: chronic skin cases more promising. Antiseptic
injection of unbroken nodules (carbolic acid, potassium permanganate),
also of open sores (mercuric chloride, iodized phenol, cupric
sulphate, saturated, zinc chloride), excise nodule. For delicate
mucous surfaces Lugol’s solution of iodine or iodized phenol diluted.
Tonics: arseniate of strychnia, copper biniodide, baryta nitrate, iron
sulphate, sulphites, bisulphites, hyposulphites, phenic acid, open air
life at pasture, or thorough ventilation, sunshine, moderate exercise,
generous, partly grain diet. Mild cases in separate herd, in secluded,
wide pasture with rich diet, including grain, and shelter in clean,
comfortable shed at will, under tonics and antiseptics, tested by
mallein at intervals, to be restored individually to work after two or
more tests without reaction. Serum of immune animals subcutem.
Treatment in man: surgically as in the horse, excision, curetting,
antisepsis, abscesses opened and disinfected; iodoform insufflations,
antiseptic gases, sprays and solutions. Internally: tonics,
sulphocarbolates, iron muriate, iodides, phenic acid, quinia,
strychnia, arsenite, stimulants, serum treatment, pure air, out door
life, rich, digestible food.
Radical efforts at prevention must look to the extinction of the disease
in the soliped, and its complete exclusion from Australia and New
Zealand shows that such a result is not unattainable. In the English
army where every glandered horse is at once killed and all pertaining to
him disinfected, the disease is now virtually unknown except in the case
of newly purchased horses or regiments operating in the field. In the
French army which formerly lost 9 per cent. per annum from glanders, now
under similar precautions loses but .5 percent. A law providing for the
prompt destruction of every glandered soliped and the safe disinfection
of carcasses, stables, harness, vehicles, utensils, fodder, litter and
manure that have been exposed to contamination, if enforced, would soon
eradicate the disease. But this law should provide efficient machinery
for its enforcement, and, under suitable safe guards, an appropriate
indemnity for the owner. With the use of mallein in all infected studs,
as a diagnostic agent, the campaign can be made sharp, short and
effective, instead of waiting as in the past for the slow development of
occult cases.
The greatest and most fundamental error in veterinary sanitary
legislation is the lack of a guarded indemnity for the animals killed. I
strongly urged this fact on the committee of the N. Y. legislature in
1898 but to no purpose. A bill was passed forbidding all indemnity for
glandered horses, and an impetus thus given to the spread of the disease
is daily bearing fruit in our great cities especially, disastrous to the
health of the horses, and a constant menace to that of humanity as well.
The law makes it the duty of veterinarians to report all cases of
glanders, but in great horse establishments such a report would stop the
use of the whole stable, at a loss of thousands of dollars per diem, and
put a sudden end to the employment of the reporting practitioner by the
firm or corporation in question. The owner of one or two horses can
afford to report, the loss of these and their work does not mean
absolute ruin, but the owner of hundreds can not safely report. For
owner and practitioner alike the alternatives are presented of obedience
to the law with personal ruin on the one hand, and the surreptitious
dealing with cases of glanders and the preservation of their livelihoods
on the other. Whatever may be said as to the constitutionality of the
law which destroys private property without compensation under the right
of eminent domain, this is certain, that, as applied to animal plagues,
this course is unjust, oppressive, and not only useless, but positively
injurious, in that it drives the owners of animals to such courses as
favor the spread of the plague in place of restricting it. To-day in New
York City glanders is extensively prevalent, but large horse owners dare
not adopt the legal measures for its extinction, with the certainty of
great loss or ruin staring them in the face as the result. It should be
further considered that any law is at once bad and vicious in its
tendency which places before the citizen the alternatives of
disobedience with profit, and obedience with loss or ruin. Such a law is
the worst possible economy because in preserving the infection, it not
only perpetuates the disease and its attendant losses for all time, but
perpetuates forever the official expenses of keeping it in check, when a
prompt extinction of the infection would once for all time abolish all
loss and all outlay for surveillance.
Until provision can be made for the enforcement of our laws against
glanders, all who handle horses should be warned of the danger of
working about strange solipeds, or those that show suspicious symptoms,
while they have any sores on the hands, and in case they must run any
risk of contact with infection, to promptly wash hands and face in a
solution of hydrargyrum chloride (1:2000), or carbolic acid (2:100).
Animals of susceptible races (sheep, etc.) which have lived with
glandered horses should be made to pass the mallein test before they can
be put upon the market for human food.
In the high, dry altitudes of the Plains and Rocky Mountains, where most
cases of glanders are mild and the majority recover, resort may be had
to malleinization provided the patients are kept safely secluded from
all other horses. In some horses with a native tendency to immunity, the
oft repeated inoculation with 0.5cc. of mallein will render the animal
refractory to the infection. Animals that have recovered from casual
attacks show the same immunity. Among those who have experimented with
mallein may be named: Straus, Schneidemuhl, Semmer, Bonome, and Vivaldi,
Mowry and Michel, Schweinitz and Kilborne. Sacharoff apparently secured
immunity in the horse by inoculation with virus modified by passing
through the cat. Straus found that dogs which had received mallein
intravenously could be made immune against intravenous inoculations,
but, as Galtier had already pointed out, were still susceptible to
cutaneous inoculations. Finger, experimenting on the rabbit, found that
immunity only resulted after a long series of inoculations. The
frequency of successful auto-inoculations in chronic cases of glanders
in the horse would tend to discredit the alleged value of single
injections of mallein, so that a long series is necessary if we would
aim at good results.
Altogether attempts at immunizing the equine population generally, are
not hopeful where it is dense, where they must be kept stabled, where
the climate is moist and where glanders is deadly, or tends to persist
in the chronic form for years in the same animal.
Considering the prevalence of the disease in a mild form on many of the
western breeding ranches it is well to test all horses arriving from the
west. The same applies to solipeds imported from abroad.