The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1882-08-18
ANTHRAX.
An Exhaustive Paper Upon This Disease
Now Affecting Our Stock.
The History of the Disease, What II Is and
How Stamped Out.

iOibps ohu hN'lo Oul itaAiCAo WIN Nv
carefully prepared paper upon
- Anthrax" or " Black leg" as it is
more familiarly known, which quite
extensively affects Wyoming herds:
This disease has a very ancient his
tory. 1t was well known in Asia
Minor about the period of the siege of
Troy. In France, during the years
1871, 1857, 1894. 1775, 1879 and 1900, it
became epiZ iotic with all domestic
animals. The disease was studied then
by B%ourgelat, Chabert, Bredin, Huyard,
Desplas, Godine and a great number Of
other eminent veterinaria ans. From
1900 until 1865 many outbreaks of this
disease have been observed in different
parts of Europe, and many of the most
learned pathologists of the day have
devoted much time to its consideration.
Professor Pasteur, OF France, has been
employed by that government to inves-
tigate the cause and devise measures to
prevent the great mortality that pre-
walls among the cattle and sheep of
that country. / will not here discuss
his findings, as they are yet incomplete,
but this | may say, that if the theories
he has advanced can be substantiated
IN active practice, then lie has made
himself a public benefactor and his
name will be handed down to future
generations with gratitude.
Observers who have closely watched
this disease almost unanimously con
clude that in cattle and sheep it is due
to dietetic errors. more particularly to
sudden and violent changes in diet,
whether that change be from a poor to
highly nutritious, more particularly a
heterogeneous diet, from dry and good
food to waterY, unripe %provender, to
damaged food of any kind, the influ-
ence of undrained lands, to food and
water contaminated with the morbid
product of animals which have died of
of this disease, extreme changes from
heat to cold.
The influence of all these causes
upon the animal, differing widely in
their primary stages, induce within the
blood certain changes which ultimately
tend to grave alterations in its COM
position and to its death and decompo-
sition.
First of all we must consider the in
iuence of highly nutritious and nitrog-
enous fodder when suddenly brought to
bear upon the animal body, and veteri-
narians are generally agreed that the
result in the rapid formation of blood,
highly charged with albuminous mate
rial, which neither tissue nutrition nor
the excretory organs are calculated to
keep in anything like its normal con-
dition. In consequence of this grave
changes occur, by which its constitu-
ants become degraded and the system
em%poisoned.
For example, the whole of the body
requires within a given time a certain
quantity of plasma for all the purposes
of nutrition, growth, heat, the forma-
ton of fat and what is eliminated by
the excretory organs; and if within
that period the quantity of that plasma
far exceeds those requirements. it
naturally follows that the unused mat
ter must accumulate in the circulation
and then undergo such grave altera-
tions as to become injurious to the
animal economy. And such such we
find to be the cast here. Blood is
loaded with various effete constituents,
notifications of urea, etc which are
speedily resolved into lower chemical
combinations, ammonia, sulphuretted
hydrogen; they %empoison the blood,
modify its power of absorbing and con-
veying oxygen from the lungs, destroy
the integrity of the blood corpuscles,
and cause within it a septic or putre-
factive action, by which its vitality is
ultimately destroyed, in fact bring about
that condition of the blood which can
be produced artifcially by the intro
duction of d~ecomposing animal matter,
or by giving it with the food upon
which the animals fed. When blood is
so altered, it tends to accumulate in
the vessels of the soft structures of the
body, such as the areolar tissue. spleen.
enteric mucous membrane and lungs,
where it rapidly transudes through the
walls of the altered and debilitated
blood vessels. and constitutes the vari-
GUS local manifestations of septic fever
which we are in the habit of witness
Ing.-Prof. Williams.
DIR. Robertson writes The causes
which tend to the production of this
blood disease from which such men,
beers of our animals of all ages are lost
may be said to be associated-1st,
With the character and conditions
of soil and and its manurial
richness, by which are materially
modified both root crops and grass.
The disease is more prevalent on rich
lands when undrained and on naturally
dry soil in damp seasons when the tenn
perature is high.
End. With a state of plethora or a
redundancy of good rich circulating
blood in the animals themselves,
more particularly when this ad-
ance in condition is pre-
coded by a previous stinting or lower
ing, when the stock have been removed
from a comparatively sparse diet, or
one poor in nutritious materials, to de-
cided abundance ola highly n~utrative
nature.