454 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



lime. For washing utensils, etc., a 5 per cent solution may be pre- 

 pared by adding 3 ounces to 2 quarts of water. This should be 

 prepared fresh from the powder, and it is but little trouble to have a 

 small tin measure of known capacity to dip out the powder, to be 

 added to the water whenever necessary. The carcass and the ground 

 should be sprinkled with powdered chlorid, or, if this is not at hand, 

 an abundance of ordinary, unslaked lime should be used in its place. 



The removal of carcasses to rendering establishments is always 

 fraught with danger, unless those who handle them are thoroughly 

 aware of the danger of scattering the virus by careless handling in 

 wagons that are not tight. As a rule, the persons in charge of such 

 transfer have no training for this important work, so that deep burial 

 is to be preferred. Burning large carcasses is not always feasible ; 

 it is, however, the most certain means of destroying infectious mate- 

 rial of any kind, and should be resorted to whenever practicable and 

 economical. All carcasses, whether buried, rendered, or burned, 

 should be disposed of unopened. When stables have become in- 

 fected they should be thoroughly cleaned out, and the solution of 

 chlorid of lime freely applied on floors and woodwork. The feed 

 should be carefully protected from contamination with the manure 

 or other discharges from the sick. 



(2) Preventive inoculation. — One of the most important discov- 

 eries in connection with the disease was made by Louis Pasteur 

 in 1881, and consisted in the new principle of producing immunity 

 by the inoculation of weakened cultures of the bacillus causing the 

 disease. This method has been quite extensively adopted in France, 

 and to some extent in other European countries, and in the United 

 States. The fluid used for inoculation consists of bouillon in which 

 modified anthrax bacilli have multiplied and are present in large 

 numbers. The bacilli have been modified by heat so that to a certain 

 degree they have lost their original virulence. Two vaccines are 

 prepared. The first or weaker, for the first inoculation, is obtained 

 by subjecting the bacilli to the attenuating effects of heat for a longer 

 period of time than in the case of the second, or stronger vaccine, for 

 a second inoculation some 12 days later. 



There are several difficulties inherent in the practical application 

 of Pasteur's vaccine. Among them may be mentioned the variable 

 degree of attenuation of different tubes of the vaccine and the vary- 

 ing susceptibility of the animals to be inoculated. The use of this 

 vaccine is increasing, nevertheless, and has reduced the mortality in 

 the affected districts from an average of 10 per cent in the case of- 

 sheep, to less than 1 per cent, and from 5 per cent with cattle, to less 

 than one-half of 1 per cent. 



It is very imj^ortant to call attention to the possibility of dis- 

 tributing anthrax by this method of protective inoculation, as the 



