Experinicuts on Anthrax at the Brown Institution. 267 
remembered th.it under no circumstances must the animal be 
allowed to lie for many hours together on the same side, but 
be moved over from right to left and vice versa day by day, that 
pressure upon the prominent parts of the body, and the now 
enlarged mammary glands, may not be continuous. 
XV. — Report on Experiments on Anthrax conducted at the Broicn 
Institution, February 18 to June 30, 1878. By Dr. Burdon 
Sanderson, F.R.S., formerly Superintendent of the Brown 
Institution. 
In February, 1878, a very serious outbreak of splenic fever 
(anthrax) occurred on Mr. Mason's farm at Rigsby, in Lincoln- 
shire, upwards of fifty animals dying in the course of a few 
days on one farm. 
It had at that time already been determined to undertake the 
inquiry respecting the nature, causes, and prevention of anthrax, 
and of the diseases allied to it, of which the first fruits have 
now been presented by Dr. Greenfield. The opportunity 
afforded by the calamity at Rigsby was therefore seized upon 
by Mr. Duguid, who was at that time Veterinary Surgeon of 
the Brown Institution, and had visited the farm as Veterinary 
Inspector of this Society, of at once beginning the proposed 
investigation. The records of the experiments, which were 
made during the succeeding months of 1878, are embodied in the 
following report. Their value consists in the evidence they 
afford of two important facts relating to splenic disease. One 
of these facts is that when the disease is transmitted by inocu- 
lation from cattle to small rodents, such as guinea-pigs, and 
then from them back again to cattle, the character of the disease 
so transmitted is much milder than that of the original dis- 
ease acquired in the ordinary way. The rodents die, but the 
bovine animals inoculated with their blood or with the pulp 
of their diseased spleens recover. The question whether this 
fact, like the analogous one of the mitigation of human small- 
pox by transmission, can be directly applied to a practical pur- 
pose, I leave to be determined by future inquiry. Its present 
interest lies in its bearing on the nature of the process of 
infection in anthrax. 
I attach more practical importance to the second fact which 
our experiments brought to light, namely, that the poison of 
anthrax can be very readily communicated by various materials 
used as food for cattle, and particularly by brewers' " grains." 
When the warm infusion of this material is once " infected " 
by the addition of a trace of anthrax poison derived from the 
