152 THE MORE CHRONIC INFECTIOUS DISEASES 



After drying they may live for ten days, but do not live long 

 in nature outside the animal body. They are easily grown 

 upon most of the laboratory foodstuffs. Most of the lower 

 animals are susceptible to glanders and it is of some impor- 

 tance in menageries. The disease in animals is like that 

 described for persons, and the beasts do not develop any- 

 thing in their blood which can be used to treat human beings. 

 Vaccines are not successful probably because the disease in 

 people is too acute to be amenable to a treatment with 

 mallein comparable to that described for tuberculin. 



BACTERIUM ANTHRACIS. 



Anthrax, or woolsorters' disease, or splenic fever, is chiefly 

 an acute infectious disease of animals caused by the Bac- 

 terium anihracis or anthrax bacillus. It is contracted by 

 human beings through association with infected animals, 

 hides, wool, rags and the like; cases have been known to 

 arise from shaving brushes in which the bristles were not 

 properly sterilized. It is expressed as superficial abscesses, 

 pustules, or carbuncles scattered over the skin, or as softening 

 of the spleen, hemorrhages into the intestinal wall and some 

 other of the organs, even the brain. The woolsorters' disease, 

 or pulmonary form, occurs from inhaling bacilli into the 

 lungs. The bacteria also enter by swallowing, or by wounds 

 and cracks. The pulmonary form is always fatal while the 

 superficial variety, although serious, is much less grave in 

 prognosis. However they enter the germs spread by con- 

 tiguity or by the lymph. Their chief action is local and they 

 do not enter the blood stream except near death. They do 

 not settle in one place and remain there, but may pass from 

 one localization to another. While most of the noxious effect 

 is mechanical the anthrax bacillus seems to produce a little 

 extracellular toxin which has the power to attack tissue and 

 cause the accumulation of edema and blood. The softenings 

 are due to the killing effect of the bacillus poisons upon the 



