ANTHRAX IN NATAL. 
271 
by direct inoculation; hence we see the advisability of avoiding 
those places, and also stables, kraals, etc., where the sick have 
been. Men have often been poisoned by eating the meat of 
affected animals, or by handling the carcasses. Kafirs, I am told, 
have had bad sores after handling, or being brought in contact 
with, the blood and debris of bucks which have died of this dis¬ 
ease ; and many have died, or been sick after eating beef affected 
with redwater; hence the necessity for a rigid inspection of all 
meat offered for sale. The risk of contagion at the watering 
places along the roads will be recognized, as cattle often die near 
them, and, in such a hilly country as this, the remains, with the 
germs, are readily washed into them by the heavy rains. The 
spread of redwater is sufficient evidence of the vitality of its 
organism, and the facility with which it is conveyed from one 
place to the other, and its distribution through the media of the 
excretions and debris of cattle. 
I do not think stabled horses can become affected when fed 
entirely on dry food; but when supplied with cut grass they are 
by no means safe, though the risk is not so great as to those 
which graze, as the latter do so in dangerous places, and bite 
close to the earth, while Kafirs cut longer grass and not so close 
to the ground as horses graze. 
TREATMENT. 
• 
' The treatment of animals affected with any form of this dis¬ 
ease is somewhat unsatisfactory, as all will testify who have had 
experience. 
As I pointed out in former reports, the proper agents to in¬ 
troduce into the system are antiseptics, that is, agents which 
counteract the poison and arrest decomposition of tissues; fol¬ 
lowed up by those which will restore the blood to its physiological 
condition. 
For this purpose I have found the best results in both horses 
and cattle from the sulphite and hyposulphite of soda in 2-oz. 
doses, and the chlorate of potass in J-oz. doses, combined some¬ 
times with opium or digitalis, at others with an aperient; Epsom 
salts for cattle, and aloes for the horse, followed up during re¬ 
covery by tonics and generous diet. 
