108 THE DISEASES' OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



lute themselves with the blood from animals that had died from the 

 disease. 



Bollinger reports finding the specific bacteria of anthrax in the 

 blood of flies which were caught upon the cadavers of such animals, 

 and to have produced the disease in rabbits by inoculating with the 

 same. 



As further vehicles of infection we may mention the harness, 

 stable-utensils, straw, and hay, etc., which have been in contact 

 with diseased animals. 



Articles of food — beets, turnips, carrots — which have been raised 

 upon lands where cadavers from anthrax-diseased animals have been 

 buried, have been asserted to have caused this disease when fed to 

 cattle. 



The fluids of the stable — urine, etc. — seem to be less dangerous, 

 as putrefaction is known to be in opposition with the life of these 

 germs. 



The respiratory tract, the external cutis, and digestive tract, are 

 the chief atria of the infectious elements, though the flesh of such 

 animals has often been consumed with impunity ; still, feeding ex- 

 periments upon animals susceptible to the disease have sufficiently 

 proved the infectiousness of such meat. The susceptibility to in- 

 fection is greater in the ruminants — tame and wild — than in the 

 solipeds, less in the omnivora, and still less in the carnivora ; the 

 cat, however, more so than the dog. 



Nature of the Infectious Elements. 



While we have already noticed this subject in our general con- 

 sideration of the bacteria, it is of such great importance that we 

 may be warranted in treating it still more in detail. 



The fact that authrax could be generated in an experimental 

 way, with blood in which the bacteridise could not be discovered, 

 has led many authors to deny to them any etiological importance. 

 This fact remained incontrovertible until observers had advanced 

 in the study of the life of these parasites. 



First their minuteness, and again the very small quantity neces- 

 sary to infection, may have led authors to this mistaken conclusion ; 

 but, above all, it was the ignorance of the earlier observers of the 

 spore of the schizomycetic fungi which led them into this error. 



An interesting; fact with reference to the intra-or^anismal life of 

 the bacteria of anthrax is, that the placenta offers a natural filtra- 

 tion apparatus, which prevents them passing from the blood of the 

 mother to that of the foetus. Inoculation experiments have demon- 



