BLACK LEG. 
355 
few escape, even with the best treatment, when once the 
germs have caused much disturbance in the organs. In 
opening the body the intestines will be found more or less 
reddened, congestioned and thickened. The liver and spleen, 
which in essential charbon (or anthrax), and in Texas fever 
are gorged and softened, offer little if any change, although 
they contain the germs. The disease runs its course in a few 
hours to a few days. It is not uncommon to see demise 
within twenty-four hours of the appearance of the first exter¬ 
nal signs. Consequently medicinal treatment is scarcely 
practicable even if there were any remedies capable of posi¬ 
tive service as curative agent. We have, therefore, to insti¬ 
tute such practice among our herds as will prevent the oc¬ 
currence of the plague, just as people take means to avoid 
small pox and the like. It is only on the line of prevention 
that we can fight maladies not amenable to curative treatment, 
and even these had better be guarded against and prevented. 
THE GERM OF SYMPTOMATIC ANTHRAX. 
The microscopic parasite that causes the lesions and phe¬ 
nomenon known as a whole under the common term of black 
leg, is in the adult state in the tissues, a short rod with 
rounded extremities. On blood serum, nutritive gelatine, 
and vegetable albumen artificially prepared, it forms fila¬ 
ments composed of rods and other forms more or less spheri¬ 
cal. The germs may be found in the bloody effusion that 
forms the characteristic tumor of black leg, in the tissues of 
that swelling, the liver, spleen, kidneys, lymphatic glands and 
the lungs. It propagates itself by fission and by spore for¬ 
mation, i. e. by the rods breaking off into shorter ones and by 
formation of seeds. 
INOCULABILITY OF BLACK LEG. 
The many opinions that have been formed concerning the 
cause of this affection, principally by those who have suf¬ 
fered through it, are so numerous and varied that it would be 
idle to attempt to disabuse the minds in error, by exposing 
the fallacies of each theory. Desiring only to give facts, the 
truth pure and simple, I herewith present evidence as to the 
causative agent. 
One is apt to consider such obscure maladies as black leg 
as more or less impenetrable mysteries, and yet a few well 
