220 Veterinary Medicine. 



4th. There is no necessity for the care and cost of holding the 

 inoculated animals apart by themselves, under official veterinary 

 control for 15 days, of withholding their products from market, 

 or of disinfecting the place where they have been kept. On the 

 contrary the animals inoculated can be treated in every way as if 

 no such injection had been made. 



Thorough Drainage and Aeration of Land. The most thorough 

 and permanent method of eradicating anthrax is by thorough 

 aeration of the soil. In dry, sandy, or gravelly soils, having a 

 good natural or artificial drainage, and not underlaid by an im- 

 permeable damp stratum, the bacillus is never permanently found, 

 and, if introduced, is slowly robbed of its virulence by the action 

 of the oxygen. When a soil can be well and permanently aerated 

 by thorough underdrainage, a few years suffice to rob it of its in- 

 fecting property and render it salubrious. In many localities, 

 however, this is actually or economically impossible, so that the 

 owner is thrown back on the alternatives, of abandoning the soil 

 for stock, or of immunizing all the animals placed on it. 



Prevention of Importation of Anthrax. To prevent the intro- 

 duction of anthrax into a country or district, the usual control 

 must be exerted on trade in cattle and their products, as in the 

 case of other infectious diseases. The exclusion of livestock 

 from an anthrax-infected country or district, or the admission 

 after 6 to 10 days of quarantine and the disinfection of the sur- 

 face of the animal. Dried hides, horns, hoofs, hair, wool and 

 bristles are even more dangerous, as they are liable to hold the 

 microbe in the spore form which will survive indefinitely and 

 plant the disease widely. The recent great extension of the dis- 

 ease along the Delaware River, in connection with the morocco 

 factories, which draw their hides from the most virulently anthrax 

 regions (India, China, Russia, Africa, S. America) is a strong 

 case in point, and nearly every tannery planted on a favorable 

 soil is an example on a smaller scale. Disinfection of all such 

 products on arrival is essential. But this should be thorough, 

 and no question of trouble nor expense should stand in the way. 

 If the trade cannot stand the expense, it has no right to exist 

 where it is, at the expense of threatened ruin, local and ultimately 

 general, of agriculture, on which all other industries are based. 

 Similar control is demanded of live stock products from infected 

 regions in America. 



