THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS 219 



may be induced by injudicious feeding with an excess of food of 

 either too nitrogenous or too carbonaceous a character, a badly- 

 balanced ration, and food not properly prepared or overfermented. 

 It is, nevertheless, very remarkable that, in spite of all the foregoing 

 causes, only solitary cases keep cropping up here and there ; and 

 when every precaution is taken to deal with the carcass, the disease 

 seldom spreads, as anthrax cannot be looked upon as infectious — that 

 is, healthy animals standing in close proximity under one roof, or in 

 the same pasture, do not take the disease by inhalation. Anthrax 

 occasionally makes its appearance in an enzootic form on low-lying, 

 undrained, sour, marshy pastures that may be adjoining rivers subject 

 to overflowing ; these cases can only be accounted for by the spores 

 being brought by the flood from an infected quarter and deposited on 

 the grazing pastures. 



328. Treatment. — When the symptoms are noticed and anthrax 

 suspected, 4 ounces of hyposulphite of soda dissolved in a quart of 

 warm water, with 1 ounce of tincture of ginger added, should be 

 administered as a drench, giving 10 to 12 ounces of raw linseed oil 

 and 2 drachms of British Pharmacopoeia carbolic acid mixed four 

 hours later, and repeating half the quantities of these medicines alter- 

 nately every four hours until the bowels respond, offering at frequent 

 intervals cold water or cold hay-tea to the animal to drink. This 

 mode of treatment I have on several occasions found very satisfactory. 

 As a rule all in-calf cows that have been affected with anthrax and 

 recovered under treatment cast their calves (abort). Post-mortem, 

 when the skin is removed from a beast that has died from anthrax 

 a peculiar sickly, musty smell is given off, while the carcass is noticed 

 to be of a yellowish-grey colour, and small drops of dark semi-fluid 

 blood is noticed coming from the cut ends of the small bloodvessels, 

 and the flesh and all internal organs, such as the heart, liver, etc., 

 have a soft, half -boiled appearance ; the spleen is very much enlarged, 

 being eight to ten times its normal size, of a dark brown colour, 

 readily broken through, and full of tarry-like semi-fluid blood ; while 

 the cavities of the belly and chest, bladder, etc., contain a dirty mud- 

 coloured fluid. Regarding preventives, I have every confidence that 



