33^ AGRICULTURAL BACTERIOLOGY. 



Europe suffers from it constantly. Germany has lost some 

 4,000 cattle from this disease, in some years, and England 

 nearly a thousand. In the United States the disease is also 

 frequent, though generally regarded as less common than in 

 Europe. Although widespread it does not occur in great 

 numbers of animals, as do some of the other bacterial diseases. 

 It may attack the animals of a single herd and produce much 

 destruction, but it is not very contagious, and does not spread 

 readily from herd to herd. 



The animals chiefly attacked are cattle and sheep, and these 

 are, indeed, the only animals in which it normally occurs as a 

 spontaneous infection. Many other animals are, however, 

 capable of infection. Horses, goats, deer, and mice are very 

 subject to the disease, while the dog, cat, and white rat are 

 not susceptible. The ordinary fowl will not take the disease 

 under normal conditions, while the sparrow will. The disease- 

 is also found in man where it is known by various names, 

 the most common name being malignant pustule. Mankind 

 is, however, not one of the very susceptible animals and, when 

 infected by a skin inoculation, the disease is quite apt to be 

 local, while in sheep and cattle it is almost sure to run a fatal 

 course. It is, however, a very serious disease in man when it 

 finds entrance into the lungs, in the so-called wool-sorters dis- 

 ease, and is almost sure to prove fatal. Among men the dis- 

 ease is mostly confined to persons who handle hides or wool, 

 and become infected through the skins of animals who have 

 died of the disease. 



The discovery of the cause of this disease was one of the 

 first triumphs of bacteriology. It is excited by a bacterium, 

 />. ant/iracis, which is perhaps better known and more studied 

 than any other species of bacterium. It was first seen in 1849 

 by Pollender, who mentioned little rod-like bodies in the blood 

 of the animals suffering from the disease, but who attributed 

 no special importance to them. A few years later, in 1863, 



