Lymph glands close to the wound might swell. Patients present first with chill, high fever and with pain in the head, back and abdomen, and extremities. Additional initial symptoms include vomiting, vomiting blood, bloody diarrhea, and prostration. Often, mucous membranes and the skin will hemorrhage. Usually caused by the inhalation of dust containing the anthrax spores.
Patients present initially with symptoms similar to the common cold.
Pulmonary anthrax usually results in death 1-2 days after the onset of acute symptoms. Cerebral anthrax is a secondary result of intestinal or pulmonary anthrax, and it occurs when the anthrax bacilli also invade the capillaries of the brain. Patients with cerebral anthrax present with the symptoms of pulmonary or intestinal anthrax, but also experience violent delerium which is often associated with hemorrhagic meningitis. Isolating B. anthracis from the blood, skin lesions, or respiratory secretions 2. Primarily high-dose penicillin and isolation.