292 Report on an Inquiry into the Nature, Causes, and 
about. The attendant was sent for, and found the animal rest- 
less, temperature 109'' Fahr., pulse could not be taken. The 
cow died at 5 P.M. The carcass was removed into a yard 
where the horses were kept at night, and a post-mortem exami- 
nation was made there. The most characteristic lesians of 
splenic apoplexy were found. All the parts with which the 
cow had been in contact were ordered to be thoroughly cleansed 
and disinfected. Notwithstanding these precautions, on Dec. 23 
a horse, which had been worked the previouSj day, was found 
dead. On Dec. 25 another was taken ill, and when the attend- 
ant arrived he found it unable to rise, and a frothy haemorrhagic 
discharge flowing from the nostrils. Blood was also running 
from the anus. The visible mucous membranes and tongue 
were highly congested and studded with haemorrhagic spots. 
Death occurred fifteen minutes after his arrival. 
In connection with this outbreak, I may mention that in the 
neighbourhood of Alford the disease appears to be endemic, 
previous cases having been reported to us. 
On a farm in the neighbourhood, the owner lost fifty cattle 
in February 1878. On June 5, 1879, a yearling steer from 
the same yard as that in which the previous outbreak had 
occurred was found dead. A post-mortem examination showed 
in the abdomen a quantity of black blood ; the spleen weighed 
8 lbs. and was greatly congested ; the gastro-intestinal tract 
contained bloody fluid throughout, and the mucous membrane 
showed numerous ecchymoses. 
Another case occurred in the same neighbourhood, though at 
some distance from the above, on June (>, in a heifer grazing 
in the marsh. No previous case was known to have occurred 
on this farm for twenty-five years before. The .symptoms 
and post-mortem appearances resembled those in the previous 
case. 
Distribution of Bacilli. — One of the most striking points in 
the morbid anatomy of anthrax is the enormous number of 
Bacilli, and the way in which they crowd the blood and tissues. 
One might indeed imagine, from the way in which the blood 
sometimes swarms with them, that they would be found nearly 
equally in all the organs. This, however, so far as my obser- 
vations go, is not the case. Nor are they especially abundant 
in the spleen in many of the cases which I have examined ; in 
some, e.g. the sheep in Case IV., none are found. 
In the heart they are often found in very great abundance, 
crowding the vessels, appearing alongside the vessels in the 
intermuscular spaces, but not in very great number ; and form- 
ing here and there masses which completely plug the small 
