78 
Pasteur and his Work, 
francs. The disease also prevails among sheep in Brie, Cham- 
pagne, Berri, Poitou, Auvergne, Dauphine, and Bourgogne. 
In the arrondissement of Chartres, 17,800 perish from it every 
year ; in Beauce, 20 per cent, of the sheep die, a loss of seven 
or eight millions of francs annually. It is estimated that sheep 
to the value of twenty millions of francs are lost annually in 
France. Cattle, horses, and other creatures, suffer also severely. 
In Russia the losses are enormous, especially among the horses 
and cattle. In 1837, in one district alone, 1900 died of 
anthrax ; and in 1857, for the Russian Empire, it was reported 
that 100,000 horses had perished. In 1860, 13,104 cattle, out 
of 18,883 attacked with the " Jaswa," succumbed ; and from the 
official report for 1864, it appears that in the five governments 
of St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Olonetz, Tver, and Jaroslav, 
10,000 animals died, most of them horses, few cattle, and still 
fewer sheep ; while 1000 persons were infected and perished. 
From the 15tli of January to the 27th of March, 1865, 47,000 
cattle, 2543 horses, and 57,844 other domesticated animals, 
were lost in the governments of Minsk, Vitepsk, and Mohilev ; 
and in the government of Tobolsk, in June and July, 1874, 
there perished from the " Siberian plague " (as anthrax is some- 
times designated) 4735 horses, 516 cattle, 1030 sheep, 52 pigs, 
15 goats, and 106 human beings. In other European countries 
it is very prevalent and deadly, and in our own islands it causes 
heavy losses at times. In India it is witnessed in all animals, 
and as " Loodiana disease" it is well known as a fatal scourge 
among military horses. In South Africa, as " Horse-sickness," 
it is most destructive, particularly in low-lying damp regions, 
at a certain season of the year, when it kills nearly all the horses 
after only a few hours' illness. 
The real cause of anthrax was, until recently, involved in 
the greatest obscurity, and many influences were invoked to 
account for its appearance. But it may be noted that seVeral 
Continental veterinarians, as Numann, Marchant, Gerlach, 
Plassc, and Delafond, were of opinion that it was of crypto- 
gamic origin — the minute fungi finding entrance into the body 
with damaged grain or forage. The contagious nature of the 
disease had been known from the remotest antiquity. 
In 1844, Delafond, then a teacher at the Alfort Veterinary 
School, was sent by the French Government to investigate the 
disease as it appears among sheep — known as the maladie du 
sang — in the districts where it was causing the heaviest losses. 
On examining the blood of diseased sheep microscopically, 
he observed peculiar rod-shaped bodies, but did not attach 
any importance to them. This fact has been lost sight of 
by nearly all recent writers on the malady. Pollcnder, a 
