Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 4 (of 5)Law, James
Science
Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 4 (of 5)
Law, James
Veterinary medicine
Symptoms: _internal cases_: hyperthermia, constitutional
disorder, mucosæ dusky, brownish, yellowish, bleeds, bloody urine,
rectal mucosa congested, blackish, colics, pharyngeal anthrax, blood
diffluent, black, broken down red globules, bacilli, abortions, death
in 12 to 48 hours: fulminant cases in cattle and sheep. Local
(external) anthrax, cutaneous, swellings: gloss-anthrax; pharyngeal,
hæmorrhoidal; sheep and goats; horse; swine; dogs; cats; birds.
Differential diagnosis: deductions from symptoms, condition of blood,
animals attacked, environment or conditions of life, presence of the
bacillus. Examination for bacillus. Post mortem lesions; gelatinoid,
bloody exudate, petechiæ, blood-gorged spleen, lymph glands, and
liver, diffluent blood, bacilli in capillaries. Inoculation
intravenously. Cultures. Prognosis. Mortality often 70 per cent.
_Definition._ Anthrax is an acute infectious bacteridian disease
occurring casually in the herbivora and omnivora and, under favorable
conditions, communicable to carnivora, birds and batrachians. Its
special features are the presence of the _bacillus anthracis_ in the
diseased parts, the destruction of red globules, the arrest of
hæmatosis, the occurrence of capillary embolism, extravasations and
exudations, and of necrotic processes in the affected parts, and a
sanguineous engorgement of the spleen.
_Synonyms._ Malignant pustule; Splenic apoplexy; Splenic Fever; Charbon;
Miltzbrand; Woolsorter’s Disease; Malignant Carbuncle; Contagious
Carbuncle.
_History and Geographical Distribution._ As anthrax prevails in damp,
undrained lands where agriculture is backward, it is not wonderful that
it can be traced to near the dawn of human history when the whole race
lived under primitive conditions. Moses records its ravages on the
bottom lands of the Nile (Ex. ix. 9), Homer, on the plains of Troy
(Iliad, Bk. 1st), Ovid, Plutarch, Dionysius, Livy, Lucretia, Columella,
Virgil, Pliny and the Arabian physicians all show a familiarity with a
disease of this nature. Later, Heusinger collects evidence of its
prevalence in certain areas in all parts of the world from the equator
to the Arctic circle. The mortality was often very high, thus Kirchner
records the death of 60,000 people in a single epidemic in 1617, in the
vicinity of Naples, Placide-Justin, that of 15,000 in St. Domingo in six
weeks in 1770, and on the Russian and Siberian Steppes it is not
uncommon for hundreds of thousands of domestic animals and thousands of
human beings to suffer in a single year.
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