224 
JAMES LAW. 
especially such as have an impervious subsoil, or which, by reason 
of the basin-like conformation of the locality, has no sufficient 
drainage. Rich river-bottoms and drying-up marshes, ponds, and 
lakes, lands that have been overmanured, and those supplied by 
drinking-water collected from the surface or from strata rich in 
organic remains, are especially likely to be centers for the recep¬ 
tion and preservation of this poison. In such localities, those 
animals are especially liable to contract the disease which are 
already in a somewhat morbid condition, excessively plethoric, 
having the blood charged with hurtful elements, the result of 
disease, faulty diet, or imperfect elimination, that have had secre¬ 
tions retained or fever developed in connection with hot dry seasons, 
lack of water, gastric and intestinal impactions, hot close buildings, 
insolation or excessive alternations of midday heat or midnight 
cold, and finally those in which from rapid growth or assimilation 
the tissues are soft, lax, and watery. With such animals, and in 
such localities, the disease is very liable to appear, and to continue 
to appear with increasing frequency and fatality, so that such 
places come to be known as “ dead lots,” and are avoided by all 
judicious stock-owners. The malady is always confined to limited 
districts, unless where the above-named conditions extend over a 
wide territory, as in the rich alluvial steppes of Eastern Europe 
and Asia, in the plains of India, and in certain of our own rich 
river-bottoms and prairies. It deserves to be stated that, like 
malarious fevers in man, this affection has become increasingly 
frequent throughout the United States in the past few years. 
While there is a strong probability that the disease is due to micro¬ 
phyte—bacillus anthracis—which is found in the blood in all the 
worst cases, and that certain conditions of the animal system are 
necessary to cause it to branch out into its special pathogenic 
development; yet, when its virulency has once been acquired, it 
maintains this through an indefinite number of generations of the 
virus, and proves one of the most indestructible of known con- 
tagia. 
Like glanders and rabies, therefore, this disease will demand 
a careful control by a National Board of Health, and measures 
must be resorted to for limiting its area and extirpating it 
