Anthrax. 
239 
believing  that  a very  considerable  proportion  of  the  outbreaks 
of  anthrax  now  occurring  in  this  country  are  due  to  a cause 
or  causes  which  are  not  contemplated  in  the  Anthrax  Order, 
and  are  not  held  in  check  by  the  existing  regulations.  It  was 
pointed  out  that  when  the  cii-cumstances  connected  with  a 
large  series  of  outbreaks  are  examined  a fact  brought  to  light 
is  that  the  majority  of  outbreaks  are  not  recurrent,  but  appar- 
ently isolated  and  independent.  No  considerable  proportion 
of  outbreaks  occur  on  what  might  be  called  permanently 
infected  farms ; l)ut  a very  large  proportion  of  them  take 
place  in  premises  or  on  farms  where  searching  inquiry  indicates 
a long  period  of  past  freedom  from  the  disease.  The  bulk  of 
the  animals  attacked  are  cattle,  and  the  victims  contain  an 
excessive  proportion  of  adults,  or  at  least  of  animals  over  one 
year  old.  These  and  some  other  facts  have  served  to  raise 
a strong  suspicion  that  many  outbreaks  are  caused  by  the 
importation  of  the  germs  of  anthrax  in  foreign  feeding  stuffs, 
and  especially  in  linseed  and  cotton  cake.  During  the  past 
year  a further  fact  tending  to  incriminate  cake  as  a cause 
of  anthrax  has  been  added,  for  a sample  of  Indian  cotton  cake, 
which  formed  part  of  the  diet  of  a lot  of  cattle  among 
which  a serious  outbreak  of  anthrax  occurred,  was  experi- 
mentally ])roved  to  he  capable  of  infecting  guinea-pigs  with 
anthrax  when  small  quantities  of  the  ground  cake  suspended 
in  water  were  injected  under  the  skin. 
If,  as  thus  appears  to  be  probable,  contaminated  cake  or 
other  foreign  feeding  stuff  is  one  of  the  causes,  perhaps  the 
main  cause,  of  the  increasing  i)revalence  of  anthrax  in  this 
country,  the  outlook  is  of  rather  a hopeless  character.  Both 
cotton  seed  and  linseed  are  largely  imi)orted  from  countries  in 
which  anthrax  is  a comparatively  common  disease,  and  in 
most  of  these  little  or  no  care  is  taken  to  destroy  carcasses  or 
to  treat  them  so  as  to  minimise  the  risk  of  permanent  soil 
contamination.  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  all  linseed 
and  cotton  seed  imported  into  this  country  contain  the  germs 
of  anthrax,  but  there  is  no  difficulty  in  understanding  how  it 
is  perhaps  more  than  occasionally  so  contaminated ; and, 
unfortunately,  there  is  no  really  practicable  test  by  which 
importers  or  merchants  could  assure  themselves  of  the  freedom 
of  any  given  consignment  of  such  materials  from  anthrax 
spores. 
The  question  whether  the  carcasses  of  animals  that  have  died 
from  anthrax  ought  to  be  disposed  of  by  cremation  or  by  burial 
is  one  that  appears  to  have  caused  some  anxiety  to  various  local 
authorities  during  the  past  year.  Hitherto  such  carcasses  have 
generally  been  buried,  and  the  fact  that  outbreaks  of  anthrax 
in  this  country  have  considerably  increased  in  frequency 
