212 
A. LIAUTARD. 
powers to carbunculous infection, that it suffices in a few hours for the 
disease to run its different stages, and to end by death, without giving 
time to any local manifestation, such as tumors or cutaneous eruptions, 
to develop themselves. 
In others, anthrax may also assume such intense form of general 
troubles that no local evolution can take place. But there are cases, 
especially in the equine and bovine families, where, to the general phe¬ 
nomena of anthrax, local symptoms are added, which establish between 
it and eruptive diseases a certain resemblance. These phenomena con¬ 
sist in external phlegmonous developments in different regions of the 
body, under the shape of peculiar tumors, which ordinarily increase 
very rapidly, and soon become crepitant and fade away. 
It is remarkable, that from the moment these carbuncular tumors 
make their appearance, the febrile state diminishes, and a certain im¬ 
provement is observed, as if a removal of the morbid elements had 
taken place from the blood by which it was saturated. There is some 
possibility, then, that the patient may recover, either that by potential or 
actual cauterization the carbuncular tumors be destroyed, or, what is 
rare but possible, that they be eliminated by a natural process. 
But when the tumor keeps on its natural progress, or—and that too 
often, though the most energetic means had been employed to contest 
its development—if the febrile conditions temporarily suspended should 
rise again, then the disease assumes again a rapid course which soon 
ends by death. It is rare to see, through critical phenomena towards the 
intestinal or urinary apparatuses, the disease assumes a favorable ter¬ 
mination. 
This series of symptoms define very plainly these diseases or, to 
speak better, the anthrax fever, and gives it a distinctive and character¬ 
istic form. 
But there is another fact more significant yet, it is the contagion which 
gives to anthrax its character of unity, and places it as a morbid species 
completely distinct fiom all other diseases with which it might have some 
symptomatic resemblance, as, for instance, the general diseases produced 
by a putiid infection. Anthrax is transmissible by inoculation to sheep, 
horse, cattle, swine, even dog, though with more difficulty, and with 
too much certainty to man. 
It is not only through inoculation that it can be transmitted. Clin¬ 
ical and experimental facts prove its possible transmission through the 
atmosphere to herbivorous animals of ovine, bovine and equine species, 
even to swine. No doubt contagion through this medium is not so cer- 
