Vivisection and the diseases of animals.

  • Fleming, George, 1833-1901.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vivisection and the diseases of animals. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    method has hitherto led to the most complete results are anthrax and chicken-cholera. Anthrax, or splenic fever, known in France as ' charbon,' and in Germany as ' Milzbrand,' is one of the most fatal and wide-spread of all the scourges of the lower animals, destroying, as it does, not only those which are in a state of domestication, but also those which are untamed. It prevails, in one or more of its diversified forms, over the entire surface of the globe. It sometimes decimates the reindeer herds in the Polar regions, and is only too well known in the tropics and in temperate latitudes. The carefully tended ruminants of the most highly civilised countries suffer equally with the wandering herds and flocks of the Mongol steppes ; and it is as much dreaded by the Finn and the Lapp as it is by the Mexican, the Arab, the Annamite, or the South African and Australian colo- nist. It has been carefully described by travellers, as they have observed it in Siberia, Lapland, Eussia, Central Asia, China, Cochin- China, the East and West Indies, Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, Mexico, North America, Australia, Egypt, and other parts of the African continent. In Europe the writings which have been published on its nature, its characteristics, and the damage it inflicts, are innu- merable. Countries with extensive marshes, or a tenacious subsoil, are usually those most frequently and seriously visited. Thus it happens that there are regions notorious for the prevalence of anthrax, as the marshes of Sologne, Dombes, and Bresse, and certain parts of Ger- many, Hungary, and Poland. The disease is enzootic in the half- submerged valleys and the maritime coasts of Catalonia, and also in the Eomagna and other marshy districts of Italy ; while it is epizootic and even panzootic, in the swampy regions of Esthonia, Livonia, Courland, and above all in Siberia, where sometimes, in order to sup- press the ravages of the terrible ' jaswa,' as it is called, the aid of the military authorities is called in, and battalions of soldiers are sent to bury or burn the thousands of infected carcasses. I do not know of a region in the whole world where anthrax is unknown ; and its anti- quity is as great as its geographical extension is wide. It was one of the scourges with which the Egyptians were punished, when there was ' a breaking forth of Mains upon man, and upon beast, through- out all the land of Egypt; upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep.' Virgil1 has depicted its deadliness and contagion with the greatest accuracy, pointing out the dangers of the tainted fleeces of sheep to mankind, as if he were describing the cause of what is now known as the ' wool-sorters' dis- ease.' 2 It frequently occurs in the histories of the Early and Middle Ages, as a devastating pestilence among animals, and through them as a plague of mankind. Our oldest Anglo-Saxon manuscripts con- tain many fantastic recipes, charms, and incantations for the preven- 1 Georg., lib. iii., vv. 478-514. » Ibid., v. 561.