Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/68

60 MURRAIN ough disinfection. If a country is generally infected, sound cattle may be protected by the free use of sulphate of iron, or sulpho-carbo- lates, by seclusion, treatment, and thorough disinfection of infected herds ; or still better, by inoculation, the animals operated on being shut up in secluded and disinfected stables and treated in every respect like diseased stock. The inoculation is made on the tip of the tail with lymph from a recently infiltrated lung and a mild case of the disease. Store markets should be closed and no stock moved except under a written official warrant, and only from herds in which no disease has ex- isted for over two months (better one year), and where disinfection has been thorough. A special supervision should be kept up at all landing ports, a clean bill of health demand- ed, and a sufficient quarantine enjoined, since the long incubation of this fever affords every facility for its introduction unobserved. 4. Malignant Anthrax, Malignant Carbuncle, Carluncular Fever, Bloody Murrain, Black Murrain, Hmmatosepsis, Typhamia, Pelcemia^ Blood-striMng (G-er. Brand, Fr. charbori), &c. These names are applied to a class of specific, contagious diseases, enzootic, but sometimes epizootic, originating in herbivora, swine, and birds, and communicable to other animals, in- cluding man. It is characterized by profound changes in the chemical and vital properties of the blood, disintegration of its globules, im- paired or suspended haBmatosis, and exudations and extravasations in the most varied parts, with a tendency to gangrene. In the earlier ages this class of diseases was very prevalent and disastrous, often extending like a plague ; and though improved cultivation has greatly limited their ravages, they are still far too fre- quent and deadly. Fleming quotes from Irish records a notice of an epidemic and epizootic in 2048 B. 0., supposed to have been of this nature. The murrain in Egypt spoken of in connection with the exodus, which attacked all domestic animals (Ex. ix.), and the plague of boils and blains upon man and beast, are referable to different forms of these affections. The decimation of the Grecian army and their beasts at the siege of Troy (Iliad, lib. i.), and the combined epidemics and epizootics in the Ro- man territories mentioned by Plutarch, Livy, and Virgil, point in the same direction. The records of the middle ages abound in accounts of pestilences on man and beast, many of them unquestionably of this kind. More recently we find the outbreak in Santo Domingo in which, from eating the dead and dying beasts, 15,000 people perished from malignant pustule in six weeks ; also the yearly devastations in the Rus- sian provinces, where besides the live stock as many as a fourth of the human population are cut off in the worst anthrax years. In the United States, epidemics occurred near Phila- delphia in 1834-'6, in Louisiana in 1837-'9, and in northern New York ("malignant erysip- elas"), after a "fatal epizootic of slavers" (glossanthrax) among horses, in 1825. The records of the bureau of agriculture show its prevalence in the malarious regions of the south, and isolated outbreaks and even human victims are still quite common in the northern states. Contagion is probably the sole occa- sion of this affection in man, and a common cause in the lower animals also. In bad cases all parts of the body are poisonous, and the virus may be dried up and kept for an in- definite period without losing its potency ; it survives a temperature of 145 F., so that cooked meat is often fatal ; and its simple con- tact with unbroken skin has sufficed to convey the disease. Spherical and staff -like bacteria, always found in the blood and morbid fluids in fatal cases, have been fixed upon as the cause of the malady; but it remains to be proved that they are more than the effect. That in- sects serve to propagate it is probable, since nearly all cases in man commence on the face, hands, or other exposed part of the body. It prevails above all on marshy soils when dry- ing, in basins with no drainage, on rich river bottoms and deltas, on stiff clays, hard pan, and other impervious subsoils, in rich valleys sheltered from winds by surrounding hills whose rocky sides radiate the heat and hasten evaporation, and even on over-manured soils, saturated with organic matter and rich in ni- trites, though the drainage may be moderately good. Yet many marshes prolific of fatal ma- larious fevers in man are not remarkable for causing malignant anthrax. They seem to be the best fields for the permanent preservation of the poison, but are perhaps not always capable of developing it de now. Plethora, youth, alternations of heat and cold, starva- tion, overwork, or anything indeed which low- ers the vitality or loads the blood with effete organic products, lays the system open to re- ceive the poison. These diseases are primarily divisible into two great classes: 1, those in which the changes are confined to the blood and internal organs, especially the spleen ; and 2, those which, in addition to the blood changes, present local swellings from blood extravasa- tions and sero-albuminous exudations. Of the first class a certain proportion die after a few minutes' illness. This, the apoplectic form, occurs in swine, horses, sheep, and cattle, in about the order named. From apparent health the victim suddenly falls, struggles, perhaps expels blood by some natural opening (nose, anus), and dies. In these there is little change even in the blood. More protracted are sple- nic apoplexy of horse and ox, blood-striking; braxy or sang-de-rate of sheep, and the car- buncular fever of swine and fowls. In these there are profound nervous prostration, pen- dent head, excited pulse and breathing, some- times abdominal pain, spots of blood-staining on the visible mucous membranes, or a deep yellow or brownish hue of these parts, and the passage of the elements of blood by some of the natural openings (nose, anus, urinary or-