ANTHRAX, OR CHARBON.
—An acute, infectious disease of plant-eating animals, which, under favorable conditions, attacks flesh-eating animals as well. It is caused by a microbe which enters the circulating blood and by multiplication therein causes its rapid destruction, and the death of the animal. The disease is as old as human history. It exists in all countries and in all latitudes. It was formerly very destructive to human life, as well as to animals. There is no disease which attacks more different kinds of animals than anthrax, nor one which is more deadly. Also, there is no disease which is harder to deal with from the sanitary point of view; nor harder to stamp out. The reasons for this will be shown later on.
Soil is the prime factor in preserving and propagating the microbe, when it is naturally wet, impermeable, and rich in decomposing animal and vegetable matter. The microbe of anthrax may enter the body by several channels. It may be taken in with the food or drink. It may be breathed into the lungs. It may enter through abraded surfaces on the skin. It may be inoculated into the body by biting insects.
There are several forms of the disease and these are determined by the modes of entrance of the virus. One form, which occurs especially in sheep and cattle, at the commencement of an outbreak, and which is characterized by the suddenness of its onset and its high degree of fatality, is known as the apoplectic, or fulminant form. Without showing any previous symptoms, an animal will suddenly be seized with loss of appetite, trembling, uneasiness, irregularity of movements, difficult breathing, blueness of the nostrils, bellowing, convulsions and hemorrhages from the natural openings. Death may occur in a few minutes or in four or five hours.
Another type is known as anthrax fever, or internal anthrax. Here we have distinct symptoms, the most important being high fever of from three to four degrees, excitability and restlessness. Blood may ooze in drops from the nose, eyes, or ears, and from inside of the forearm or thigh, in sheep. There will be trembling, prostration, numbness of the loins, thirst, grinding of the teeth, colicky pains, bloating, bloody discharges, palpitation of the heart, difficult breathing, blueness of the visible mucous membranes, jerking of the muscles of the back and neck, and rolling of the eyes. The animal will die in comatose state, or in convulsions, and death will occur in sheep in about a day. Cattle will live from two to five days, and horses from one to six days.
A third form is external anthrax, which manifests itself in swelling of the tongue, throat, rectum, and skin in cattle; and of the tongue, throat, neck, shoulders, withers, flank, or thigh in horses. These swellings have a firm, doughy feeling, are not painful generally, and show a marked tendency to gangrene. They never suppurate. If cut (this should never be done), they discharge a pale, straw-colored liquid. In this may be found the microbe.
The rapidity with which putrefaction occurs in an anthrax carcass is very marked. Another characteristic is, the blood loses its property of clotting, is dark and tarry, and does not become light in color by contact with air, like normal blood. In fulminant cases, however, these characters are not so well marked. Other signs of the disease, if a farmer should be so unfortunate as to open an anthrax carcass and thereby spread the infection on his farm, will be great enlargement of the spleen, or milt, and also of the liver. Bloody patches in the tongue, throat, lungs, stomach, and intestines, caul, skin, and muscles, or in fact in almost any part of the body, will be plainly visible.
The Management of the Sick Animal
and disposal of the carcass are the most important procedures in an outbreak of anthrax, from a sanitary standpoint. Medicinal treatment is of little value. A vaccine has been discovered that is very effective in preventing the disease. This has been used very successfully in both this and European countries. If a case of anthrax is suspected, call your veterinarian at once. The disease will not pass through the air from a sick animal to a healthy one, but the discharges which invariably occur during the progress of the disease all contain the microbe, and everything soiled by them is infectious material and capable of spreading the disease.
When an animal is infected, remove at once to the burial lot and tie it near the place it is to be buried, to save handling and scattering the infection. When it dies, dig the grave. Then saturate the animal with kerosene or coal oil and set it afire. By means of ropes tied around the fetlocks turn the animal, saturate the other side and fire that, and also the soles of the feet. When every hair has been burned off, dissolve a one-pound carton of chlorinated lime (freshly opened) in sufficient water to make a fluid that will just pour from the cup. Fill the nostrils with this, also the mouth and eyes, which should be pried open with a stick dipped in solution. Saturate some cotton or rags with the lime, and plug up the nostrils or mouth. Treat the rectum likewise. Turn the animal into its grave, sprinkle the ground on which it has stood and laid with a strong solution of chlorinated lime, and shovel the top layers of this soil into the grave. Follow this with the grave soil, banking it up, as in human graves. In cases where the animal is found dead, the same method is to be pursued, except that the animal is hauled to the grave on a sled (never dragged over the ground). In these cases, also, the place where it died must be disinfected by the same means, after hauling out all loose material and burning the same, as near as possible to the place where the animal died. It would also be necessary to disinfect the sled and all tools which came in contact with the carcass.