Also 5–6 farsy(e, 7 farsey, farcie, 8 fassee. [variant of FARCIN.]
1. A disease of animals, esp. of horses, closely allied to glanders.
1481–90. Howard Househ. Bks. (Roxb.), 400. Medesyn for a horse that had the farsy xij. d.
1552. Huloet, Farsye … a sore vpon a beast or horse.
1614. Markham, Cheap Husb., I. xlix. (1668), 61. For the Farcy … with a knife slit all the knots, both hard and soft, and then rub in the Medicine.
1710. Lond. Gaz., No. 4674/8. Has had the Fassee.
1713. Derham, Phys. Theol., II. vi. 5. An Horse troubled with the Farcy, and could not be cured with the most famed Remedies, cured himself of it in a short time by eating Hemlock, of which he eat greedily.
1847. Youatt, Horse, viii. 185. Farcy is intimately connected with glanders.
1869. E. A. Parkes, A Manual of Practical Hygiene (ed. 3), 115. Glanders and farcy are less frequently caught in knackeries than in stables.
b. = farcy-bud.
1684. Lond. Gaz., No. 1989/4. The Horse has a Sore or Farcy on the Off-side.
1770. Monthly Rev., 135.
| As horses full of tumours, | |
| Are sent to the salt marshes, | |
| And, what is most amazing, | |
| Leave there their glanders and their farcies. |
2. The same disease as communicated to men.
1762. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, V. i. I wish from my soul, that every imitator in Great Britain, France, and Ireland, had the farcy for his pains; and that there was a farcical house, large enough to hold—aye and sublimate them.
1865. Morning Star, 4 Jan. A cabman died of ‘acute farcy.’
3. attrib. and Comb., as farcy humour, sore, ulcer; farcy bud, one of the small tumors that occur during the progress of farcy; farcy button = prec., esp. applied where there is little thickening of connective tissue; farcy cords, farcy pipes, the hardened lymphatic vessels found in most cases of farcy; † farcy horse = farcied horse: see FARCIED ppl. a.
1533. Surtees Misc. (1890), 34. That no man put eny farcy horsses … of the commen.
1802. Blaine, Outlines Veterinary Art (1816), 411. Every diffused swelling … even ossifications and ligamentary enlargements are termed farcy humours.
1842. T. H. Burgess, Man. Diseases Skin, 182. The matter of a glandered sore will produce farcy, and that of a farcy-bud will produce glanders—a convincing proof of the identity of these diseases.
1878. T. Bryant, Pract. Surg., I. 76. Giving rise to tumours or a knotty condition of the subcutaneous glands, called ‘farcy buds,’ and is therefore called ‘farcy.’
