How to cure farcy according to Jordanus Rufus
Hippiatrica , Parisinus greacus 2244, fo. 74v Since I am publishing a translation (coming out on Halloween) of a fourteenth-century French version of Jordanus Rufus's De medicina equorum (c. 1250), the most influential veterinary treatise of its time in Europe, I thought I would share some extracts in the weeks leading up to publication. The following one contains the description and treatment of farcy, a devastating bacterial disease. Farcy is the skin form of glanders, manifesting in the apparition of growths following the course of the lymph vessels. Those growths turn into ulcers and discharge pus. Glanders a highly contagious, often fatal bacterial disease, caused by the bacterium Burkholderia mallei . It results in ulcerating growths affecting the upper respiratory tract, lungs, and skin, with symptoms including high fever and thick nasal discharge. There are a short-term and a long-term form of the disease (common in horses), the latter manifesting in growths ...
