ANTHRAX : PREVENTIVE INOCULATION IN LOUISIANA. 
643 
nate the water supply of livestock in the immediate neighbor¬ 
hood, but by receding, after a freshet, infect the grazing along 
the banks of such water courses. Our valuable scavengers, the 
buzzard and the carrion crow, are no doubt responsible for 
spreading anthrax infection from the dead animals, for, after 
soiling their feet by walking over the blood and offal, as well 
as by other means, they are capable of producing fresh centres 
of the disease on the grass of fields and other places on which 
they alight. Hogs, or swine, many of which, with us, are not 
under the immediate control of their owners, spread the infec¬ 
tion by first of all contracting the disease themselves, as well as 
carrying infection on their feet and snouts, then dying at some 
distance away, and creating new foci, and sources from which 
more virulent blood may be obtained. Similar allusion may 
also be made to the wandering cur-dog. 
These are some of the commoner agencies with us, by 
which infection is spread from the early victims or first cases 
left unburned or uninterred, which, however, does not include 
the skinning of carcasses through ignorance of the danger to 
the operator, or of distributing the infection by such procedure. 
But in addition to the carcasses of the domestic animals as 
sources of the virus, we occasionally have, in extensive epizoo¬ 
tics, some of the wild animals, such as deer and others, in our 
swamps and woods, becoming affected, and thus enlarging the 
infected areas. 
Such, I may say, has been the condition of affairs with re¬ 
gard to anthrax in Louisiana. For how long, no one knows; 
but, at all events, from a time antedating the recollection of our 
oldest inhabitants. 
Fortunately, I am pleased to be able to say, the situation is 
beginning to show marked evidences of improvement, as the 
result, I presume, of a persistent effort to inform our people 
concerning the true nature of the disease, how it may reasona¬ 
bly be prevented, and the great importance to be attached to 
strict sanitary measures for its control and possible eradication, 
although the latter is improbable in the near future, owing to 
