TREATMENT. 219 



bring the germs into positions accessible to the animals 

 through pasturing, or indirectly by food or water brought to 

 the stable. The Avater-supply should be traced to its source, 

 and our attention given to ascertain if there were chance of 

 its being contaminated in its course by any means. All pools 

 and ditches should be thoroughly cleaned out, and the greatest 

 care given to the proper disposal of the 'clearings;' while the 

 animals should have no access to the situations where the 

 disease was supposed to have been until every one of these 

 has been put under the most favourable conditions in our 

 power. All tools used in operating on the living body, or at 

 the autopsy, should be scrupulously cleaned and disinfected, 

 as should everything wdiich could have been contaminated. 

 When we consider the extreme facility of transmission of the 

 virus in some cases, such for instance as we have noted in 

 woolsorters' disease, it certainly seems extraordinary, consider- 

 ing the carelessness shown by the class, how knackers' men, 

 butchers, and others having to do with the affection and the 

 corpse, should escape so frequently as it would seem they do. 



Most of the foregoing directions are in their entirety only 

 applicable to rural districts ; we do not often meet with the 

 disease in the large towns, but when such does occur we must 

 advise that all these measures which are in any way practicable 

 be stringently carried out. Also when the disease has to be com- 

 bated in India, South Africa, or elsewhere, all measures having 

 for their object the prevention of anthrax must be based on 

 the same general principles as here laid down ; the details 

 will of course be as various as the several outbreaks. 



In a former chapter we drew some attention to the method 

 of ' protective inoculation ;' and although in Great Britain the 

 disease does not assume proportions sufficiently important for 

 us to advocate its use generally here, in the two countries we 

 have just mentioned, as well as for the Cumberland disease in 

 our Australasian colonies, we do recommend it as worthy of 

 every consideration. The date of the birth of its practice 

 is not as yet sufficiently remote for us to quote our practical 

 experience of it, or to draw from any source information 

 which will warrant our advising its adoption as a simple opera- 

 tion, successful in most men's hands, and one whose success 

 has been undoubtedly proved. Nevertheless, those who have 



