ENZOOTIC DISEASES. 275 



which lands are overstocked, or animals of different species 

 are brought together, and made to live in common. 



There are, therefore, enzootic disorders due to natural, and 

 others due to artificial, causes. Human intelligence has 

 suggested how to correct natural defects of land for the 

 purpose of rearing crops, and it can suggest means to correct 

 them with a view to protect stock from disease. The arti- 

 ficial causes are, however, counteracted more readily, and 

 with much greater certainty. 



ANTHKAX, OK CARBUNCULAR FEVER: MILZBRAND (GERMAN); 



MILTVUUR (DUTCH) ; MALADIES CH ARBONNEUSES (FRENCH) ; 



TYPHUS BLUTSEUCHE PUSTULA MALIGNA. 



There are many forms of anthrax fever. They all originate 

 spontaneously in herbivorous and omnivorous quadrupeds; 

 they are communicated by contact or inoculation to all 

 warm-blooded animals when they occur under circumstances 

 favourable to the development of the anthrax poison ; they 

 have raged as plagues in past centuries, and are apt to 

 assume the epizootic character in hotter countries than our 

 own ; they rarely, if ever, spread by contagion in the United 

 Kingdom, whereas continental observers attribute general 

 outbreaks of these diseases chiefly to contagion. 



Anthrax is a blood disease ; a fever in which there is a 

 very sudden change in the physical characters and physio- 

 logical properties of the blood, and in which passive haemor- 

 rhages, ecchymoses, phlegmons, boils and carbuncles, and 

 gangrenous complications, occur with fatal effect. It origin- 

 ates spontaneously in young animals more readily than in 

 old, in the thriving and vigorous more readily than in weak 

 animals ; in those that are suddenly changed from spare to 

 liberal keep, and on rich lands that are usually damp and ill 

 drained. 



