ANTHRAX : PREVENTIVE INOCULATION IN LOUISIANA. 
649 
however, unvaccinated animals in the neighborhood were dying 
with great rapidity. During this same outbreak there were other 
somewhat similar records, but I have not the exact data. In the 
spring of 1897 I vaccinated over 200 horses and mules in one 
locality without a single case, so far as I know, of oedema at the 
point of inoculation larger than a pigeon’s egg. Vaccination 
has been carried on since in this vicinity, but I have not heard 
of a single death, although the disease was in the neighborhood 
this summer. 
In 1899, the owner of five large sugar plantations, with an 
aggregate of 368 mules, furnished me with detailed statistical 
results of vaccination that summer, a summary of which is as 
follows, viz. : 39 cases and 14 deaths; or, 
Average number of animals taken sick . . . 10.6 
Average number died. 
Average number of deaths of sick animals . . 35.9 
During the 1899 outbreak, and while making some investiga¬ 
tions into the history of anthrax in different portions of the 
State, the owner of a large plantation in a charbonous district 
below the city of New Orleans informed me that he had vacci¬ 
nated about 100 mules for the previous 5 years, and had lost 
only two animals during that time, one not inoculated, the 
other permitted to graze on a headland over which anthrax car¬ 
casses had previously been dragged. In the summer of 1899 
the disease was epizootic all round the neighborhood of this 
plantation, with flies excessively numerous ; such being always 
the case during the years in which we have the most widespread 
outbreaks. 
In my own parish of Hast Baton Rouge we had that same 
summer a few cases transmitted from a neighboring parish, in 
which a large number of all kinds of animals were lost. Pre¬ 
cautions were at once taken, through the local authorities of 
both parish and city, to cremate all victims known to have died 
of anthrax, and to inoculate extensively. This put a check to 
the spread ; but early in the spring of 1900 a bull, which had 
been roaming over the locality where the disease had appeared 
