Company Of Spears

‘Very well, but how could influenza be mistaken for glanders – or farcy I think the first report had it.’

Sam shook his head again. ‘It’s not really that difficult, although you will recall I would not commit myself.’

Hervey shrugged. ‘In truth, Sam, I do believe you said you didn’t think it was glanders.’

‘Well, to answer your question, the common symptom is catarrh; and fever. The trouble is, glanders takes several forms, as you’re no doubt aware, but always with the glandular swelling – of the lymphatic specifically. In different years and places influenza, too, varies much in intensity and in some of its symptoms. Therefore it is not unreasonable to be uncertain of which illness is present in the early stages.’

Hervey took off his forage cap and placed it on the table, a sure sign that cool reason was returning. ‘How prudent you were. It would have cost you nothing to put them down.’

‘Well,’ said Sam, with a sigh, ‘I confess it was not entirely without self-interest. I’ve been collecting blood and mucus from the infected animals – the ones recovering, that is – and I intend inoculating some of the others to see what is the effect. With your leave, of course.’

Hervey’s brow furrowed. ‘We’re taking the most active steps to prevent the spread of the disease are we not, and you now want to spread it deliberately!’

‘Both are true, but I should carry out the experiment in such a way that the animal I inoculated, if it developed the influenza, would not be able to infect others.’

Hervey looked gravely doubtful. ‘Sam, we do not have the best of things at present – you won’t yet have heard of last night’s affair at the powder mills. This is not the best of times to be risking even one horse.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I trust your science, God help me! How many horses?’

Sam smiled. ‘Ten; perhaps not even that.’

Hervey nodded slowly. ‘Very well. And all from A Troop?’

‘No, I need some which have had no opportunity of infection.’ ‘Very well.’

Hervey leaned back in his chair, wishing now that there was coffee. ‘What does your science say of these diseases, Sam? I know Clater, but he says little. I don’t suppose you hold him in any regard.’

‘On the contrary: some of his cures, his medicines – perhaps the majority even – are of no use whatsoever, but they are at least harmless!’

‘He was no scientist.’

‘He was writing thirty years ago and more. I think you should dispose of your Clater. I’ll recommend a more scientific volume.’

‘When you have written it?’ He held up a hand to stay the protest. ‘Tell me of your science, Sam. Why do we seem to do no different from when I was cornet?’

Sam shrugged. ‘We have made some progress – much, I have to say, by observing what our cousins in human practice have learned. But as to the cause of illness, I confess it is true we have not made great steps. If you want my opinion it is simply put: that we may divide disease into two classes, the specific and the non-specific.’ He took off his reading glasses and began polishing them. ‘Each specific disease, into which class glanders and influenza fall, is marked by certain fixed and unchangeable features which distinguish it from any other disease, if not always perfectly to our observation, and it can only arise by propagation from the original source. The non-specific diseases are those of spontaneous growth, such as constitutional disturbance in the lungs, liver, stomach and so on.’

Hervey frowned. In one sense he himself might have observed as much. ‘To what does this tend?’

Sam hesitated. ‘Hervey, you look done in – if you’ll permit me.’ He stood and opened one of his medicine cabinets, taking out a bottle and two glasses. ‘I would not as a rule prescribe this, but I myself have been about the whole night.’

Hervey smiled. ‘I’m as happy to take my medicine from a horse doctor as from any.’

Sam poured two glasses of brandy. ‘What do you know of germs?’

Hervey looked blank.

‘You have not heard of germs?’

Hervey raised his eyebrows.

‘Or animalculae?’

‘No.’

Sam sipped a good measure of his brandy. ‘What is the root cause of the influenza in A Troop?’

Hervey took his glass and began warming it between his hands. ‘Since I do not know where precisely A Troop was when it acquired the disease, I cannot say.’

Sam nodded. ‘That is reasonable enough. But you would ascribe the disease to place?’

Hervey looked wary. ‘Ye-es.’ He took a sip of his brandy.

‘And what particular to the place would be the cause?’

Hervey frowned. ‘The air, of course. What else? And wind-borne poisons. Miasmas, are they not called?’

‘They are. And these are generated…?’

‘By stagnant water, rotting matter – by filth, commonly.’

The veterinarian shook his head. ‘You would be entirely at ease in the Royal College of Physicians, Hervey. And indeed my own. But to my mind it is an insufficient hypothesis. You suffer from remittent fever, do you not, contracted in Ava?’

‘Who has told you that?’

‘Hervey, I am not so strange to the regiment!’

Hervey took another sip. ‘Yes, I suffer from remittent fever. What is the connection?’

‘Where do you suppose you contracted it?’

Hervey laughed. ‘I know very well where I contracted it, I assure you! The stinking swamps of Rangoon!’

‘Mal aria.’

‘Just so.’

Sam took a longer sip of his brandy. ‘The problem, you see, is that there are marshes without malaria, and malaria without marshes. And if this is so it surely cannot be that the circumstances alone – torpid water, decaying vegetable or animal matter, excreta – it cannot be that these of themselves generate the disease, else it would be invariable. And what might account for the different diseases? Do we suppose, say, that a rotting cat begets an influenza miasma, whereas glanders comes from a dead dog?’

Hervey looked thoughtful. ‘I had not considered it in those terms, no. What do you say is the progenitor?’

Sam sighed again, but out of weariness with his own state of knowledge. ‘There is no doubt, from extensive observation, that filthy conditions are associated with disease. But the connection is not for me sufficiently explained by the miasmatists. I am drawn instead to the notion of animalculae, germs – we may call them what we like: the most infinitesimally small creatures, which somehow invade the body. It is but speculation, and some hold it to be perilously wild, and yet I am convinced it is the future, at least so far as specific disease is concerned. For the non-specific I myself believe the cause remains an imbalance in the body’s humours. Oh, not the bile and phlegm and such like; there is much more to it than that. But if we observe a spontaneous growth in the organs of an otherwise healthy horse we may conclude that the microscopical constituents of the animal’s physiology are … un-balanced. So far as I may see, the treatment of non-specific disease must tend to the restitution of that balance – by medication, by surgery perhaps, or by the proper regulation of the animal’s regimen and environment. That is the business of farriery, Hervey – of horse-management as you progressives call it. And what every man in the Sixth should strive to excel in.’

Hervey drained his glass and held it out for more. ‘That is understood. But are you implying that the other sort of disease, the “specific” kind, is beyond our management?’

‘No,’ said Sam, in a tone not altogether certain. ‘Let me explain – so far as we may surmise, for positive knowledge has not yet been vouched-safe to us. What is a germ, animalcula, call it what you will? We do not rightly know. Imagine, however – for I believe the comparison apt, not least for its etymology – a germ is like a seed, wholly aboriginal. No wheat can grow but from a wheat seed, no oak tree but from an acorn.