ANTHRAX AND ANTHRACOID DISEASES. 147 



healthy, Anthrax is also disseminated through the agency of 

 flies ; and Bollinger, who has observed that the disease is often 

 most prevalent when flies are in the greatest abundance, has 

 induced it in rabbits by inoculating them with flies caught on 

 the carcases of animals dead from anthrax. The flies, how- 

 ever, resist the influence of the virus, although bacteridae are 

 found in them. 



Pathology. 



The influence of all these causes upon the animal economy, 

 differing widely in their primary stages, induce within the blood 

 certain changes which ultimately tend to grave alterations in 

 its composition, and to its death and decomposition. 



First of all we must consider the influence of highly nutri- 

 tious and nitrogenous fodder when suddenly brought to bear 

 upon the animal body ; and veterinarians are generally agreed 

 that the result is the rapid formation of blood, highly charged 

 with albuminous materials, which neither the tissue-nutrition 

 nor the excretory organs are calculated to keep in anything like 

 its normal condition. In consequence of this, grave changes 

 occur, by which its constituents become degraded, and the 

 system eventually empoisoned. If it be remembered that every 

 tissue and organ in the body, by withdrawing from the blood 

 those constituents which are essential to their well-being, serve 

 as excretory organs to the rest of the body, the subject will 

 be more clearly understood. Without this withdrawal from the 

 blood of those constituents by every tissue and organ, it soon 

 becomes unfit for the purposes for which it is intended, and the 

 same condition results when it is so rapidly (and hence imper- 

 fectly) formed, that the process of tissue-nutrition cannot pos- 

 sibly eliminate or withdraw from it more than a moiety of its 

 superabundant constituents. 



For example, the whole of the body requires within a given 

 time a certain quantity of plasma for all the purposes of nutri- 

 tion, growth, the formation of fat, and what is eliminated by the 

 excretory organs ; and if within that period the quantity of that 

 plasma far exceeds those requirements, it naturally follows that 

 the unused matter must accumulate in the circulation, and 

 there undergo such grave alterations as to become injurious to 

 the animal economy, empoison the blood, modify its power of 

 absorbing and conveying oxygen from the lungs, destroy the 

 integrity of the blood-corpuscles, and convert it into a proper 

 habitat for the development and growth of low organisms, 

 which cause within it a septic or putrefactive action, by which 

 its vitality is ultimately destroyed ; in fact, bring about a con- 

 dition of the blood similar to that which can be produced artifi- 

 cially by the introduction of decomposing animal matter, or by 



