362 Anthrax 



hand, an ear of the dead animal can be inclosed in a bottle or fruit 

 jar and sent to the nearest laboratory where diagnosis can be made. 

 The ear contains so little readily decomposable tissue that it keeps 

 fairly well, drying rather than rotting. It contains enough blood to 

 enable a bacteriologist to make a successful examination. 



Sanitation. — ^As every animal affected with anthrax is a menace to 

 the community in which it lives — to the men who handle it as well 

 as the animals who browse beside it — such animals should be killed 

 as soon as the diagnosis is made, and, together with the hair and skin, 

 be burned, or if this be impracticable, Frankel recommends that they 

 be buried to a depth of at least 13-^-2 meters, so that the sporulation 

 of the bacilli is made impossible. The dejecta should also be care- 

 ' fully disinfected with 5 per cent, carbolic acid solution. As the 

 pastures and barnyards are certainly infected wherever an animal 

 has been the victim of anthrax, all other susceptible animals upon 

 the farm, and all such upon neighboring farms, should at once be 

 vaccinated. 



Cases of human anthrax must be treated by isolation, careful 

 dressing of the lesions when external, the dressings being burned 

 as soon as removed. The expectoration, urine and feces should be 

 disinfected with care. The patient should be defended from flies, 

 and the nurse and others who come into contact with the patient 

 should be warned of the dangerous character of the infection. 



Bacilli Resembling the Anthrax Bacillus 



Bacilli presenting the morphologic and cultural characteristics 

 of the anthrax bacillus, but devoid of any disease-producing power, 

 are occasionally observed. Of these. Bacillus anthracoides of Hiippe 

 and Wood,* Bacillus anthracis similis of McFarland,t and Bacillus 

 pseudoanthracist have been given special names. What relation- 

 ship they bear to the anthrax bacillus is uncertain. They may be 

 entirely different organisms, or they may be individuals whose viru- 

 lence has been lost through unfavorable environment. 



* "Berliner klin. Wochenschrift," 1889. 16. 



t "Centralbl. f. Bakt.," vol. xxiv, No. 26, p. 556. 



j "Hygienische Rundschau," 1894, No. 8. 



