anthrax: PREVENTIVE INOCULATION IN LOUISIANA. 
651 
of this method of prevention in Louisiana is the fact that in 
those localities which suffered most from yearly, or at least pe¬ 
riodic, epizootics of anthrax before vaccination became so gen¬ 
erally adopted, experienced the past summer a wonderful degree 
of immunity from the disease, which I think we must attribute 
to the fact that the use of the lymph is now almost general in 
those sections, and that greater attention is being directed to the 
more careful disposal of the dead animal, our people more fully 
appreciating its being the chief source from which this most 
deadly disease is spread. 
I believe we are gradually solving the anthrax problem in 
the Pelican State, and the progress we have already made is, I 
think, considerable and fairly satisfactory, when we take into 
account the amount of ignorance, superstition, and the errone¬ 
ous and visionary ideas which prevailed up to io or 12 years 
ago regardingthe true nature of the disease and the most potent 
factors in causing its spread. What we have accomplished has 
in great measure, I think, been due to a persistent endeavor to 
educate our people ; for we have no sanitary laws of much im¬ 
portance, and no live-stock sanitary board or commission vested 
with authority to properly execute those we have. This condi¬ 
tion of affairs, however, we hope to see changed in the near 
future. I question very much if ten years ago a single dose of 
preventive vaccine was used or an anthrax carcass destroyed as 
a sanitary precaution against the spread of the disease in our 
State. To-day there are probably 40,000 or 50,000 doses of vac¬ 
cine used, and carcasses are being much more carefully looked 
after, which I feel indicates some progress, at least. 
With years of added infection in our anthrax localities, and 
with such favorable climatic conditions for bacterial and insect 
development as we possess, complete extermination of the in¬ 
fection cannot be looked for in the immediate future. So we 
must endeavor to live amongst it by rendering ourselves immune 
against it until such conditions arise by which we can stamp it 
out. Our measures must be preventive and strictly sanitary, 
the importance of both of which we have been trying to impress 
