292  Annual  Report  for  1910  of  Royal  Veterinary  College. 
is  this  peculiarity  of  outbreaks  in  Great  Britain  which  generally 
makes  it  inadvisable  to  recommend  protective  inoculation  of 
the  surviving  animals  by  the  method  which  was  originally 
devised  by  the  late  M.  Pasteur,  and  which  has  been  practised  on 
an  immense  scale  in  foreign  countries  where  the  conditions  are 
quite  different.  Although  it  is  not  open  to  doubt  that  animals 
can  be  immunised  against  anthrax  in  this  way,  the  method 
has  two  grave  defects  ; one  being  that  it  is  not  free  from 
danger,  and  the  other  that  it  requires  a period  of  at  least  two 
or  three  weeks  to  confer  any  real  protection  on  the  inoculated 
animals.  It  hardly  requires  to  be  pointed  out  that  one  cannot 
urge  an  owner  to  resort  to  this  method  of  prevention  when, 
according  to  general  experience  in  this  country,  an  outbreak 
may  be  considered  at  an  end  when  one  or  two  animals  have 
died.  The  moment  when  the  first  case  has  been  detected  is 
the  time  when  preventive  measures  are  most  necessary  if 
required  at  all,  but  for  at  least  a fortnight  after  this  the 
Pasteurian  method  of  anti-anthrax  inoculation  is  powerless  to 
prevent  infection  or  death.  It  is  well,  however,  that  farmers 
should  know  that  there  is  another  method  of  protecting 
animals  against  anthrax  which  has  the  double  merit  of  acting 
immediately  and  with  practically  no  risk.  This  method 
consists  in  giving  the  animal  which  it  is  desired  to  protect  a 
dose  of  so-called  anti-anthrax  serum.  An  animal  which  has 
received  a proper  dose  of  this  serum  is  protected  against 
anthrax  for  the  next  two  or  three  weeks,  which  in  this  country 
is  usually  the  period  of  greatest  danger  after  the  first  case  has 
occurred. 
But  there  is  experience  to  show  that  a good  anti-anthrax 
serum  is  not  merely  protective,  but  also  actually  curative, 
provided  it  is  given  by  injection  into  the  veins  before  the 
disease  has  entered  on  its  last  stage,  and  this  suggests  the 
means  by  which  at  least  some  hundreds  of  fatal  cases  of 
anthrax  in  this  country  might  be  saved.  Although  in  many 
outbreaks  of  anthrax  the  first  animal  attacked  is  found  dead 
or  moribund  without  any  premonitory  symptoms  having  been 
noticed  by  the  owner  or  attendants,  there  is  a very  simple 
means  of  obtaining  warning  regarding  the  subsequent  cases  in 
the  same  outbreak.  It  is  only  necessary  to  take  the  tempera- 
tures of  the  surviving  animals  at  intervals  during  the  following 
few  days,  for  although  the  period  of  visible  illness  in  anthrax 
is  often  very  short  there  always  is  a time  preceding  this  illness 
in  which  the  temperature  is  much  above  normal.  During  this 
period  the  animal’s  life  can  generally  be  saved  by  means  of  the 
serum  treatment.  , If  this  fact  were  generally  known  and  acted 
upon  there  would  rarely  be  two  fatal  cases  of  anthrax  in  the 
same  outbreak. 
