529 



usually terminates fatally. An examination of the blood shows a dark 

 fluid which does not clot, and which remains black after exposure 

 to the air. After death the bodies putrefy rapidly and bloat up; the 

 tissues are filled with gases and a bloody foam exudes from the mouth, 

 nostrils, and anus, and frequently the mucous membranes of the rec- 

 tum protrude from tlie latter. The hairs detach from the skin. Con- 

 gestion of all the organs and tissues is found, with interstitial hemor- 

 rhages. The muscles are friable and are covered with ecchymotic 

 spots. This is specially marked in the heart. 



The black, uncoagulated and incoagulable blood shows an iridescent 

 scum on its surface, which is due to the fat of the animal dissolved 

 by the ammonia produced by the decomposed tissues. The serum 

 oozes out of every tissue and contains broken-down blood, which, 

 when examined microscopically, is found to liave the red globules 

 crenated and the leucocytes granular. A high power of the micro- 

 scope also reveals the bacteria in the shape of little rod-like bodies of 

 homogeneous texture with their brilliant spores. 



The lymphatic ganglia are increased four, five, six, or ten times 

 their natural size, enlarged by the engorgement of blood. The spleen 

 shows nodulated black spots containing a muddy blood, which is 

 found teeming with the virus. The mucous membi-anes of the intes- 

 tines are congested and brown; the surface of the intestines is in 

 many places denuded of its lining membrane, showing fissures and 

 hemorrhagic spots. The liver has a cooked appearance; the kidnej^s 

 are congested and friable; the urine is red; the pleura, lungs, and 

 the meninges are congested and the bronchi of the lungs contain a 

 bloody foam. 



En resume: The symptoms are those which are found in any dis- 

 ease with a rapidly decomposing blood. 



The treatment of anthrax was entirely useless and ineffectual until 

 within a comparatively few years. The curative treatment, for wliich 

 almost every drug in the pharmacopoeia has been used, was without 

 avail, except, perhaps, the use of iodine, injected in the circulation 

 in as large quantities as could be tolerated by the system. This 

 treatment gives good results in the human being, but requires too 

 much personal attention to be economical in animals when the disease 

 occurs in epidemic form, although it may be used in the horse when 

 occurring in an animal of great value. 



The prophylactic treatment formerly consisted in the avoidance of 

 certain fields and marshes which were recognized as contaminated dur- 

 ing the months of August and September and had been occupied the 

 years in which the outbreaks usually occurred. It underwent, how- 

 ever, a revolution after the discovery by Pasteur of the possibility of 

 a prophylactic inoculation which granted immunity from future attacks 

 of the disease equal to that granted by the recovery of an animal from 

 an ordinary attack of the disease. 



