75P MICROBIOLOGY OF DISEASES OF MAN AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS 



corresponding antiserums more success has been obtained. Not one of 

 these methods, however, has been sufficiently widely applied with suc- 

 cess enough to warrant general adoption. 



The prophylaxis of Pneumococcus infections lies in general hygienic 

 measures, in the destruction of sputa and avoidance of possible infection 

 by mouth spray, etc. 



Anthrax* 



Bacterium antkracis* 



Also called splenic fever or charbon; and in man, wool-sorter's dis- 

 ease or malignant pustule. 



The disease has been known for centuries. It is thought that it was 

 one of the plagues of Egypt, mentioned as a murrain on beasts, and boils 

 and blains on man and beast. The first accurate characterization of 

 the disease was made by Chabert about 1800. PoUender in 1849 and 

 Rayer and Davaine in 1850 reported that they had seen "filiform 

 bodies" in the blood of animals which had died of anthrax, and in i860 

 Davaine announced he had succeeded in transmitting the disease to 

 healthy animals by inoculating them with blood from an anthrax in- 

 fected animal, and asserted that these filiform bodies or bacteria were 

 the cause of the disease. This result was attacked, and for ten years 

 there was a fierce controversy over this idea, which was finally stilled 

 by the convincing experiments of Robert Koch in 1876. Koch culti- 

 vated the bacterium of anthrax from the blood, showed that the inocu- 

 lation of these cultures in susceptible animals produced anthrax, worked 

 out the life history of the organism, and enunciated the cardinal require- 

 ments — which constitute the proof of the pathogenic nature of an organ- 

 ism, what later bacteriologists have named the rules or postulates of 

 Koch. 



Geographical Distribution. — The disease is very widespread, 

 occurring aU over the world in tropic, semitropic, and temperate cli-. 

 mates. Wherever stock are found in large numbers anthrax is usually 

 present. The disease ravages the herds and flocks in Russia, Siberia, 

 India, Argentina and parts of Hungary, France and Germany. Local 

 epidemics occur constantly in England, Canada and the United States. 

 In the delta of certain rivers the organism probably grows in the soil 



* Prepared by F. C. Harrison. 



