CHAPTER IX 



1877—1879 



The confusion of ideas on the origin of contagious and epidemic 

 diseases was about to be suddenly enlightened ; Pasteur had 

 now taken up the study of the disease known as charbon or 

 splenic fever. This disease was ruining agriculture ; the 

 French provinces of Beauce, Brie, Burgundy, Nivernais, Berry, 

 Champagne, Dauphine and Auvergne, paid a formidable yearly 

 tribute to this mysterious scourge. In the Beauce, for in- 

 stance, twenty sheep out of every hundred died in one flock; 

 in some parts of Auvergne the proportion was ten or fifteen per 

 cent., sometimes even twenty-five, thirty-five, or fifty per cent. 

 At Provins, at Meaux, at Fontainebleau, some farms were 

 called charbon farms ; elsewhere, certain fields or hills were 

 looked upon as accursed and an evil spell seemed to be thrown 

 over flocks bold enough to enter those fields or ascend those hills. 

 Animals stricken with this disease almost always died in a few 

 hours; sheep were seen to lag behind the flock, with drooping 

 head, shaking limbs and gasping breath ; after a rigor and some 

 sanguinolent evacuations , occurring also through the mouth and 

 nostrils, death supervened, often before the shepherd had had 

 time to notice the attack. The carcase rapidly became dis- 

 tended, and the least rent in the skin gave issue to a flow of 

 black, thick and viscid blood, hence the name of anthrax given 

 to the disease. It was also called splenic fever, because 

 necropsy showed that the spleen had assumed enormous dimen- 

 sions ; if that were opened, it presented a black and liquid pulp. 

 In some places the disease assumed a character of extreme viru- 

 lence ; in the one district of Novgorod, in Russia, 56,000 head 

 of cattle died of splenic infection between 1867 and 1870. 

 Horses, oxen, cows, sheep, everything succumbed, as did also 

 528 persons, attacked by the contagion under divers forms ; a 



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