GLANDERS.
The most scrupulous cleansing and disinfection is essential owing to the infectious nature of the acute disease and of its chronic type (farcy), and no groom suffering from abrasions should be permitted to tend upon any suspected animal. This is equally imperative in the case of nurses or attendants coming into contact with glanders occurring in the human subject, and the patient should always be rigidly isolated.
The treatment of the acute disease is very unsatisfactory, the great majority of the cases ending fatally; little can be done save to treat the symptoms of fever, prostration and joint pain by rest in bed, generous liquid diet and free stimulation. The site of the entrance of the bacillus, when recognised, should be freely excised or cauterised by the galvano cautery. All swellings and local collections of pus should be incised early, and the cavities, after being syringed, may be well mopped out with Sublimate solution or Creosote and cotton-wool on a stout probe.
In chronic cases the same surgical measures must be promptly followed, and when the nose is affected a nasal antiseptic douche containing Carbolic Acid should be continually used and the throat sprayed with the same solution (1 in roo).
Drugs are of little use in the acute type of the disease, but in chronic cases Sulphocarbolates and Benzoate of Soda are valuable and may be given in doses of 3o grs. three times a day. Where there is much prostra tion, large doses of Ammonia are indicated. Quinine, 5 grs. every four hours, dissolved in 15 mins. of the Tincture of Perchloride of Iron, may be given. Arsenic, Iodides, Carbolic Acid, and Mercurial inunctions have been also employed, sometimes with advantage.
Mallein has been injected in doses of to to 15 mins. of the Lister Insti tute preparation, though some authorities maintain that it should never be used in human glanders or farcy.
Symptoms, as they arise, such as pain, diarrhca, profuse perspirations, rigors, vomiting, &c., must be met by appropriate remedies. The air of the patient's room should be kept saturated with the vapour of Carbolic Acid, Terebene, or Turpentine.
Sir A. Wright injects a vaccine prepared from cultures made from the local lesions of the patient; this is to be administered in such doses and at such intervals as the opsonic indications direct, but notwithstanding most patient treatment by this method it sometimes fails.