BACILLUS ANTHRACIS 



101 



reappeared on twenty-three farms or other premises 

 in England, and six in Scotland, where it had been 

 reported in the previous year." (Dr Poore's Milroy 

 Lectures, On the Earth in relation to Contagia, 

 1899.) 



An admirable account of the disease, as it occurs 

 in man, is given by Dr Hamer and Dr Bell, in the 

 valuable series of monographs lately edited by Dr 

 Oliver of Newcastle, under the title Daitgerous 

 Trades (London, John Murray, 1902). Happily, 

 the disease is very rare among men, even among 

 those most exposed to it. For its treatment in 

 man, an antitoxin has been used with some success : 

 but the cases are too few to be of importance. 



The bacillus anthracis was first seen more than 

 fifty years ago: " Anthrax has the distinction of 

 being the first infectious disease the bacterial 

 nature of which was definitely proven." # Pollender 

 in 1844, Roger and Davaine in 1850, noted the 

 petits bdtonnets in the blood of sheep dead of the 

 disease, and thought they were some sort of micro- 

 scopic blood-crystals: it was not till 1863, after 

 Pasteur's study of lactic-acid fermentation, that 

 Davaine realised they were living organisms. 

 Afterward, Koch succeeded in making cultures 

 of them, and reproduced the disease by inoculat- 

 ing animals with these cultures ; yet it was said, 

 so late as 1876, that the bacillus anthracis was 

 not the cause of anthrax, but only the sign of it : 



* See Dr Flexner's account of the disease, in volume xix. 

 of S ted man's Twentieth Century Practice. 



