94 



food quickly succumlj. These are gatherings by the way from, 

 which some day we may hope to obtain practical advantages. 



"We may here inquire how does the anthrax bacillus kill ? 

 So far as we can learn, it acts partly by depriving the blood 

 of its oxygen, partly by blocking up the minute vessels of im- 

 portant organs, and partly by forming poisons in some of the 

 ^uids of the body, analagous to what occurs in the production 

 of alcohol from sugar. It will therefore be understood that 

 the symptoms are of a mixed character. A glance at them as 

 they occur in man will serve as a type of what is seen in most 

 acute infectious diseases. The symptoms may be either local 

 or general. In the local symptoms there is destruction of the 

 23art affected. The general symptoms have been so well des- 

 cribed by Mr. Spears in his report to the Local Grovernment 

 Board on the Bradford wool-sorter's disease, that I ask your 

 attention to a condensed account. Mr. Spears says, the course 

 of the disease is devisible into stages. At first we have the 

 stage of incubation ; next the stage of invasion ; next the 

 acute and stormy manifestations ; next, unless the patient die, 

 the stage of recovery, followed in some cases by secondary in- 

 flammatory action. The duration of incubation could not be 

 accurately determined. In the stage of invasion there were 

 chilliness, great bodily weariness, and mental depression, some- 

 times perspirations, restlessness, sighing, yawning, aching of 

 the limbs, dizziness, nausea, and sometimes vomiting. After a 

 few days the sufferer suddenly becomes worse, the prostration 

 and restlessness are more marked, the respiration is ac- 

 celerated, the pulse rises to between 100 and 140 per minute,, 

 the temperature becomes variable, and as the disease progresses 

 there msij be higher fever with a temperature of 10i° or 105°, 

 with a tendency to irregular downfalls. Then come violent 

 beadache, incessant vomiting, occasional delirium, together 

 with signs of local congestions, followed in bad cases by death, 

 sometimes from prostration and sometimes from profound 

 coma. Many patients in Bradford suffered from this obscure 

 fever. The workmen suspected a certain kind of wool — the 

 mohair from the Van district in Asia Minor — and at some of 

 the mills they adopted the plan of drawing lots to determine 

 who should work this kind of wool. At the time of Mr. Spears' 

 visit a sample could not be obtained, but evidence was forth- 

 coming from other sources. The tissues of the patients who 

 died were examined by Dr. Greenfield at the Brown Institute, 

 and whole colonies of the anthrax bacilli were discovered. 

 The inoculation of animals with these bacilli or with cultiva- 

 tions from them produced anthrax in the animals operated on. 

 Besides this it occurred that about the time the workmen com- 

 j^lained, the animals on a sewage farm on which the suds from 



