DR. LEGEAR'S STOCK BOOK. 303 



CHAPTER XXV. 

 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES. 



CHARBON OR ANTHRAX. 



Anthrax may be defined to be a malignant and contagious dis- 

 ease of the blood, attacking particularly cattle, horses, mules, 

 sheep and goats, but communicable to all domestic animals. It 

 may be communicated to man, and is then known as "malignant 

 pustule." On account of it attacking such a variety of the do- 

 mesticated animals it is one of the most dreaded scourges of ani- 

 mal life. 



History. This disease dates back to the siege of Troy, in Asia 

 Minor, and was a terrible plague of the cattle of Egypt in the 

 time of Closes. And in response to the casting forth of ashes 

 from the furnace by Moses, the modern name of charbon, an- 

 thrax and carbuncle, all signifying burning, would seem some- 

 what remarkable. The Greeks in writing about it in regard to 

 man called it anthrax, while the Latin writers termed it car- 

 buncle. In Germany it is called milzbrand; in Australia, Cum- 

 berland disease. In the Middle Ages it was frequently confound- 

 ed with another plague, rinderpest, but the outbreaks of it in 

 996 A. D. and 1090 A. D. in France, clearly identified it as a 

 different disease. In 1617, at Naples, Italy, numbers of hu- 

 man beings died from eating the flesh of animals which were 

 affected with the disease. Serious outbreaks constantly occur in 

 the United States, and it has a great tendency to spread. In re- 

 cent years the most noticeable outbreaks have occurred in Dela- 

 ware, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Louisiana and California. 

 Between June 15 and October 15, 1893, 970 animals succumbed 



