Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/784

764 At the end of three days three of the sheep folded above the graves had died of splenic fever, while those excluded from them continued to be healthy. This result speaks for itself.

Malignant pustule, which is simply splenic fever, affects shepherds, butchers, and tanners, who handle the flesh and hide of tainted animals. Inoculation with the bacillus almost always occurs in consequence of a wound or scratch on the hands or face. In Germany, fatal cases of anthrax have been observed, in which the disease has been introduced through the mouth or lungs, as in the case of the sheep observed by Pasteur. The human subject appears, however, to be less apt to contract the disease than herbivora, since the flesh of animals affected by splenic fever, and only killed when the microbe is fully developed in the blood, is often eaten in farm-houses. In this case the custom prevalent among French peasants of eating overcooked meat constitutes the chief safeguard, since the bacteria and their germs are thus destroyed.

The rapidity with which anthrax is propagated by inoculation generally renders all kinds of treatment useless: if, however, the wound through which the microbe is introduced can be discovered, it should be cauterized at once. This method is often successful in man. The pustule is cauterized with red-hot iron, or with bichloride of mercury and thymic acid, two powerful antiseptics, certain to destroy the bacteridium. It is expedient, as a hygienic measure, to burn the tainted carcasses, and, if this is not done, they should be buried at a much greater depth than is usually the case.

But the preservative means on which chief reliance is now placed is vaccination with the virus of anthrax. Pasteur has ascertained that when animals are inoculated with a liquid containing bacteridia of which the virulence has been attenuated by culture carried as far as the tenth generation, or even further, their lives are preserved. They take the disease, but generally in a very mild form, and it is an important result of this treatment that they are henceforward safe from a fresh attack of the disease; in a word, they are vaccinated against anthrax.

In the cultures prepared with the view of attenuating the microbe, it is the action of the oxygen of the air which renders the bacteridium less virulent. It should be subjected to a temperature of from 42° to 43° in the case of Bacillus anthracis, to enable it to multiply, and at the same time to check the production of spores which might make the liquid too powerful. At the end of the week, the culture, which at first killed the whole of ten sheep, killed only four or five out of ten. In ten or twelve days it ceased to kill any; the disease was perfectly mild, as in the case of the human vaccinia. After the bacteridia have been attenuated, they can be cultivated in the lower temperature of from 30° to 35°, and only produce spores of the same attenuated strength as the filaments which form them (Chamberland).