822 CYCLOPEDIA OF LIVE STOCK AND COMPLETE STOCK DOCTOR. 



Black Leg, Black Quarter, Quarter III, Charbo?i, Chancre a la Langue, 

 Sang de Rate, Mai de Sang, Splenic Apoplexy and Braxy in Sheep, Bloody 

 Murrain, etc. Under the above names are included a group of diseases 

 very virulent, malignant and contagious, appearing under different forms, 

 externally and internally, and attacking the different species of lower 

 animals and man, in an epizootic, enzootic or sporadic manner, according 

 to the influences that produce it, or whether it is got by inoculation. It 

 arises spontaneously in low, damp, rich pastures, and along the banks of 

 overflowed rivers, or where ponds have ])een drained off or dried up, the 

 soil containing a great amount of organic matter, and when cattle are fat- 

 tened too fast, by feeding on rich, succulent food, especially clover. Long 

 continued warm, dry weather, favoring the emanations of organic matter 

 and miasmatic gases, with great changes in temperature between day and 

 night, especially in a still atmosphere, favor its development. 



The main characteristic of the disease is black, tarry blood, that will 

 not coagulate, and containing rod-like bodies {bacilli) containing spores, 

 which are the active part of the virus. Blood containing these spores has 

 been dried, reduced to dust, and kept four years, and found to be as active 

 as ever in producing the fatal disease. (Koch.) The spores do not con- 

 tinue to increase after death, and are not found in any great quantity. 

 The rods are found in greatest quantity in the spleen. The spleen, liver 

 and lymphatic glands enlarge and become soft. The bloody flux may lo- 

 cate in any part of the body, with the tendency to gangrene, death and 

 decomposition of the part affected, and the formation of gases that distend 

 the tissues, making a crackling noise when the hand is passed over it. 

 When it commences on one point of the surface, a small blister forms, 

 gathers, breaks and dries up, and others form around it, and so on in con- 

 secutive rings it spreads. This constitutes malignant pustule, and is the 

 form it usually takes in man, got by inoculation, from handling carcasses 

 and skinning animals dead from anthrax, handling dirty rags, etc. 



Anthrax has two distinct ways of manifesting itself, with external lesions 

 and without them. To the former belong the black leg, black quarter, or 

 bloody murrain, black tongue, Siberian boil plague, and carbuncular ery- 

 sipelas of sheep and swme, and malignant sore throat of the latter; to the 

 latter, all those having specific changes in the blood, with engorgement of 

 of the spleen, exudations and blood-stained spots in the internal organs, 

 and sudden death. 



The Siberian Boil Plagjie attacks horses, cattle, sheep, goats and pigs, 

 and manifests itself in swellings on the sheath, udder, throat, breast, dew- 

 lap, etc., which are hard, yellowish, and streaked with red, and sometimes 

 spotted. The animals die in from twelve to twenty-four hours. This, 

 inoculated into man, produces malignant pustule or charbon. 



