VIII. 
THE BACILLUS OF ANTHRAX. 
[Fr., CHARBON; Ger., MILZBRAND. | 
ANTHRAX is a fatal infectious disease which prevails extensively 
among sheep and cattle in various parts of the world, causing heavy 
losses. In Siberia it constitutes a veritable scourge and is known 
there as the Siberian plague ; it also prevails to a considerable extent 
in portions of France, Hungary, Germany, Persia, and India, and 
local epidemics have occasionally occurred in England, where it is 
known under the name of splenic fever. It does not prevail in the 
United States. In infected districts the greatest losses are incurred 
during the summer season. 
In man accidental inoculation may occur among those who come 
in contact with infected animals, and especially during the removal of 
the skin and cutting up of dead animals, when there is any cut or 
abrasion upon the hands. A malignant pustule is developed as the 
result of such inoculation, but, as a rule, general infection does 
not occur, as is the case when inoculations are made into the more 
susceptible lower animals—rabbit, guinea-pig, mouse. Those who 
handle the hair, hides, or wool of infected animals are also liable to 
contract the disease by inoculation through open wounds, or by the 
inhalation of dust containing spores of the anthrax bacillus. Cases 
of pulmonic anthrax, known formerly in England as “ wool-sorters’ 
disease,” have been occasionally observed in England and in Ger- 
many, and are now recognized as being due to infection through the 
lungs in the manner indicated. 
The French physician Davaine, who had observed the anthrax 
bacillus in the blood of infected animals in 1850, communicated to 
the French Academy of Sciences the results of his inoculation experi- 
ments in 1863 and 1864, and asserted. the etiological relation of the 
bacillus to the disease with which his investigations showed it to be 
constantly associated. This conclusion was vigorously contested by 
conservative opponents, but has been fully established by subsequent 
investigations, which show that the bacillus, in pure cultures, induces 
