a. It almost infallibly secures the toxins of the disease prevailing in the particular herd, thus escaping the danger of using the weakened virus of emphysematous anthrax on some other disease (anthrax, Wildeseuche, Barbone, etc.), which has been mistaken for it, and which may not be prevented by this purchased product.
b. During life the blood of emphysematous anthrax is usually free from the microbe, and even where that is present it is liable to be in very small numbers, so that we secure either the pure toxins, or if a few germs are present they are so scanty, that weakened as they are by heat, they are without danger to the animal operated on. I have never had occasion to note evil results.
c. There is no danger of the spread of the bacillus to new territory, as we secure the material from a herd in the already infected territory, and use it only on the animals on the same land.
The certainty of results with this method, and the comparative absence of danger of injury to the animal operated on, and of all risk of the extension of the area of infection appeal to me so strongly, that I would not willingly resort to the purchased products, except where it proves impossible to secure the virus on the spot.
ANTHRAX.
Definition. Synonyms. History and geographical distribution. Etiology: Bacillus anthracis. Susceptible animals: small rodents, sheep, horse, camel, ox, goat, deer, stag, man, swine, dog, white rat and bird when chilled, frog when heated; young most susceptible, races long exposed to infection are least. Soils, wet, dense, impermeable, basins, swamps, rich river bottoms, deltas, rich meadows, below tanneries, alkaline soils, wells with surface drainage; season: wet, hot and dry, late summer and autumn; flies; infected buildings, harness, vehicles, fodder, litter, butchers’ knives and wagons, surgical instruments; insolation; privation of water: plethora, starvation: overwork, exhaustion. Bacillus anthracis: rod, nonmotile, 5 to 20μ by 1 to 1.5μ, square ends, isolated in blood, often filamentous in cultures, sporogenous, ærobic, stains easily in aniline and iodine, killed at 131° F. (spores at 203° to 282° F.), action under chemical disinfectants, or septic ferments: air favors sporulation and survival; in shallow graves, water. Infection atria: ingestion, inhalation, inoculation, insects, placenta. Forms: fulminant, internal, febrile, local,—external,—gloss-anthrax, pharyngeal, hæmorrhoidal, subcutaneous. Lesions: blood normal in fulminant, dark, diffluent, crenated or disintegrated globules in prolonged cases, tissues brown or yellow, heart pale; liver enlarged, softened, pale, hæmorrhagic: spleen enlarged, blood-gorged, ruptured; lymph glands hyperæmic; serosæ congested, petechiated, hemorrhagic; lesions embolic and like the blood swarm with bacilli. Toxins, ptomaines. Incubation 1 to 6 days. Symptoms: internal cases: hyperthermia, constitutional disorder, mucosæ dusky, brownish, yellowish, bleeds, bloody urine, rectal mucosa congested, blackish, colics, pharyngeal anthrax, blood diffluent, black, broken down red globules, bacilli, abortions, death in 12 to 48 hours: fulminant cases in cattle and sheep. Local (external) anthrax, cutaneous, swellings: gloss-anthrax; pharyngeal, hæmorrhoidal; sheep and goats; horse; swine; dogs; cats; birds. Differential diagnosis: deductions from symptoms, condition of blood, animals attacked, environment or conditions of life, presence of the bacillus. Examination for bacillus. Post mortem lesions; gelatinoid, bloody exudate, petechiæ, blood-gorged spleen, lymph glands, and liver, diffluent blood, bacilli in capillaries. Inoculation intravenously. Cultures. Prognosis. Mortality often 70 per cent.
Definition. Anthrax is an acute infectious bacteridian disease occurring casually in the herbivora and omnivora and, under favorable conditions, communicable to carnivora, birds and batrachians. Its special features are the presence of the bacillus anthracis in the diseased parts, the destruction of red globules, the arrest of hæmatosis, the occurrence of capillary embolism, extravasations and exudations, and of necrotic processes in the affected parts, and a sanguineous engorgement of the spleen.
Synonyms. Malignant pustule; Splenic apoplexy; Splenic Fever; Charbon; Miltzbrand; Woolsorter’s Disease; Malignant Carbuncle; Contagious Carbuncle.
History and Geographical Distribution. As anthrax prevails in damp, undrained lands where agriculture is backward, it is not wonderful that it can be traced to near the dawn of human history when the whole race lived under primitive conditions. Moses records its ravages on the bottom lands of the Nile (Ex. ix. 9), Homer, on the plains of Troy (Iliad, Bk. 1st), Ovid, Plutarch, Dionysius, Livy, Lucretia, Columella, Virgil, Pliny and the Arabian physicians all show a familiarity with a disease of this nature. Later, Heusinger collects evidence of its prevalence in certain areas in all parts of the world from the equator to the Arctic circle. The mortality was often very high, thus Kirchner records the death of 60,000 people in a single epidemic in 1617, in the vicinity of Naples, Placide-Justin, that of 15,000 in St. Domingo in six weeks in 1770, and on the Russian and Siberian Steppes it is not uncommon for hundreds of thousands of domestic animals and thousands of human beings to suffer in a single year.
The geographical distribution of the disease is largely influenced by soil and climate. On dense, impermeable clays and hardpan subsoils, on river bottom lands, dried lake basins and deltas, rich in organic matter, and with the air driven out by water or gaseous fermentation products, the germ is preserved and propagated if once introduced. Thus it is common around the mouth of the Nile, and along the occasionally inundated banks of the Vistula and Danube, the Spree, Oder, Elbe, Rhine, Eure, Loire, Seine and Marne, and in England in the Fen district. On the rich, undrained, black soils of Siberia it is extremely prevalent and fatal. In the rich Genesee Valley, N. Y., the writer has seen 200 cattle in one herd and three human attendants attacked in the course of a fortnight, and in different meadows receiving the drainage of tanneries, the affection prevails every summer and autumn. It is much more prevalent in the rich lands of the Southern States and a widespread and deadly epizoötic prevailed in Louisiana in 1896. Where the soil is favorable, the germ may be preserved indefinitely, even in mountainous districts, and near Los Angeles, Cal., where the disease was introduced in imported sheep some years ago it has become permanently domiciled, on the dry ranges which have moist lands (Cienegas). When an outbreak occurs, the herds or flocks are usually moved to higher soil, and the carcasses being left unburned and unburied the infection is spreading year by year (McGowan, Morrison).