CHAPTER XIV. 



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ANTHRAX. 1 



OTHER NAMES. SPLENIC FEVER, MALIGNANT PUSTULE, WOOL- 



SORTER'S DISEASE. GERMAN, MILZBRAND ; FRENCH, CHARBON. 2 



Introductory. Anthrax is a disease occurring epidemically 

 among the herbivora, especially sheep and oxen, in which 

 animals it has the characters of a rapidly fatal form of 

 septicaemia with splenic enlargement, attended by an extensive 

 multiplication of characteristic bacilli throughout the blood. 

 The disease does not occur as a natural infection from man to 

 man, but may be communicated to him directly or indirectly 

 from animals, and it may then appear in one of three forms. 

 In the first there is infection through the skin, in which a local 

 lesion, the "malignant pustule," occurs. In the second form 

 infection takes place through the respiratory tract. Here very 

 aggravated symptoms centred in the thorax, with rapidly fatal 

 termination, follow. Thirdly, an infection may occasionally 

 take place through the intestinal tract, which is now the first 

 part to give rise to symptoms. In all these forms of the affec- 

 tion in the human subject, the bacilli are in their distribution 

 much more restricted to the local lesions than is the case in the 

 ox, their growth and spread being attended by inflammatory 

 oedema and often by haemorrhages. 



Historical Summary. Historical researches leave little doubt that 

 from the earliest times anthrax has occurred among cattle. For a long 

 time its pathology was not understood, and it -went by many names. 

 Pollender in 1849 pointed out that the blood of anthrax animals con- 

 tained numerous rod-shaped bodies which he conjectured had some 



1 In even recent works on surgery the term "anthrax" may be found 

 applied to any form of carbuncle. Before its true pathology was known, the 

 local variety of the disease which occurs in man, and which is now called 

 "malignant pustule," was known as "malignant carbuncle." 



2 This must be distinguished from "charbon symptomatique," which is 

 quite a different disease. 



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