1st. As the material can be derived from a case of the outbreak in hand,
there is no risk of using the anthrax protective inoculation for black
quarter, hæmorrhagic septicæmia or other disease which is so often
confounded with it.
2d. There is no danger of the sudden enhancing of the potency of a
weakened microbe on account of some condition of the animal inoculated,
as no living microbe is employed.
3d. There is no possibility of planting the anthrax bacillus, on new
soil, as is so liable to take place in using the weakened microbe.
4th. There is no necessity for the care and cost of holding the
inoculated animals apart by themselves, under official veterinary
control for 15 days, of withholding their products from market, or of
disinfecting the place where they have been kept. On the contrary the
animals inoculated can be treated in every way as if no such injection
had been made.
_Thorough Drainage and Æration of Land._ The most thorough and permanent
method of eradicating anthrax is by thorough æration of the soil. In
dry, sandy, or gravelly soils, having a good natural or artificial
drainage, and not underlaid by an impermeable damp stratum, the bacillus
is never permanently found, and, if introduced, is slowly robbed of its
virulence by the action of the oxygen. When a soil can be well and
permanently ærated by thorough underdrainage, a few years suffice to rob
it of its infecting property and render it salubrious. In many
localities, however, this is actually or economically impossible, so
that the owner is thrown back on the alternatives, of abandoning the
soil for stock, or of immunizing all the animals placed on it.
_Prevention of Importation of Anthrax._ To prevent the introduction of
anthrax into a country or district, the usual control must be exerted on
trade in cattle and their products, as in the case of other infectious
diseases. The exclusion of livestock from an anthrax-infected country or
district, or the admission after 6 to 10 days of quarantine and the
disinfection of the surface of the animal. Dried hides, horns, hoofs,
hair, wool and bristles are even more dangerous, as they are liable to
hold the microbe in the spore form which will survive indefinitely and
plant the disease widely. The recent great extension of the disease
along the Delaware River, in connection with the morocco factories,
which draw their hides from the most virulently anthrax regions (India,
China, Russia, Africa, S. America) is a strong case in point, and nearly
every tannery planted on a favorable soil is an example on a smaller
scale. Disinfection of all such products on arrival is essential. But
this should be thorough, and no question of trouble nor expense should
stand in the way. If the trade cannot stand the expense, it has no right
to exist where it is, at the expense of threatened ruin, local and
ultimately general, of agriculture, on which all other industries are
based. Similar control is demanded of live stock products from infected
regions in America.
The control of home markets, stockyards, and abattoirs is no less
important. Fortunately the disease is shortlived and deadly, and is much
more easily discovered and arrested than in the case of plagues with
prolonged incubation and frequently occult form (glanders,
tuberculosis). An inspection of the various markets, and the detention
of herds that have shown anthrax infection would do much to limit
extension. This would entail the disinfection of the infected places,
cars, boats, harness, clothing, and other things, and of the skins of
the healthy animals of the infected herd.
_The Therapeutic Treatment_ of anthrax in animals must in the main
follow in the same lines given below for the human being; locally,
antiseptics (mercuric chloride or iodide, Luzol’s solution, hydrochloric
acid, phenic acid, iodized phenol, creoline, cresyl, oil of turpentine,
formalin, salicylic acid, scarification, excision of the primary sore or
swelling with antisepsis, antiseptic injections into the swelling.)
Internally, there have been employed, dilute phenic acid, creolin,
terebene, calomel, quinine, hydrochloric acid, bichromate of potash,
tincture of iron chloride, etc. (see below).