450 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



died of anthrax. It will be remembered that in such bodies the 

 anthrax bacilli are present in great numbers, and wherever blood 

 or other body fluids are exposed to the air on the surface of the carcass 

 there the formation of spores will go on with great rapidity in the 

 warm season of the year. It will thus be readily understood how this 

 disease may become stationary in a given locality and appear year 

 after year and even grow in severity if the carcasses of animals which 

 have succumbed to it are not properly disposed of. These carcasses 

 should be buried deeply, so that spore formation may be prevented 

 and no animal have access to them. By exercising this precaution 

 the disease will not be disseminated by flies and other insect pests. 



We have thus two agents at work in maintaining the disease in any 

 locality — ^the soil and meteorological conditions, and the carcasses of 

 animals that have died of the disease. Besides these dangers, which 

 are of immediate consequence to cattle on pastures, the virus may be 

 carried from place to place in hides, hair, wool, hoofs, and horns, 

 and it may be stored in the hay or other fodder from the infected 

 fields and cause an outbreak among stabled animals feeding upon it 

 in winter. In this manner the affection has been introduced into 

 far-distant localities. 



How cattle are infected. — We have seen above that the spores of 

 the anthrax bacilli, which in their functions correspond to the seeds 

 of higher plants and which are the elements that longest resist the 

 unfavorable conditions in the soil, air, and water, are the chief agents 

 of infection. They may be taken into the body with the feed and 

 produce disease which begins in the intestinal tract, or they may 

 come in contact with scratches, bites, or other wounds of the skin, 

 mouth, and tongue, and produce in these situations swellings or 

 carbuncles. From such swellings the bacilli penetrate into the blood 

 and produce a general disease. 



It has likewise been asserted that the disease may be transmitted by 

 various kinds of insects which carry the bacilli from the sick and 

 inoculate the healthy as they pierce the skin. When infection of the 

 blood takes place from the intestines the carbuncles may be absent. 

 It has already been stated that since anthrax spores live for sev- 

 eral years, the disease may be contracted in winter from feed gathered 

 on permanently infected fields. 



The disease may appear sporadically, i. e., only one or several 

 animals may be infected while the rest of the herd remain well, or it 

 may appear as an epizootic attacking a large number at about the 

 same time. 



Symptoms. — The symptoms in cattle vary considerably, according 

 as the disease begins in the skin, in the lungs, or in the intestines. 

 They depend also on the severity of the attack. Thus we may have 

 what is called anthrax peracutus or apoplectiform, when the animal 



