A report on remittent anthrax / by R.W. Burke.

  • Burke, R. W.
Date:
[1887]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A report on remittent anthrax / by R.W. Burke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Post Mortem Appear¬ ances well, or do so very imperfectly in one body under certain conditions, whereas they may be pernicious when certain other conditions are present. (Emmerich, Tageblatt d. 59, Versammlung Deutsche? NatuvforscJm und Aerzte 18 bis., 24 September, 1886, p. 145). May not this consideration explain why in one animal the microbes of anthrax produce an acute attack, whilst in another they do not ? It is known that, not only in an animal’s body, but cultivated in artifical media, bacteria may retain their properties unaltered, or they may undergo more or less modification. If it is true that not every nutrient soil is equally well adapted to a certain micro- zoon, that microzoon developing better in one constitution than in another, it must con¬ sequently be true, that one mircrozoon may be so changed that it may occasionally show some difference, according to its surrounding conditions, in its mode of growth and other peculiarities, to such an extent that its pathogenic activity might be lessened or strengthened according to those conditions. This idea is in accordance with what daily experience teaches with respect to plants and animals. Plants put in a convenient soil may grow extremely well, and may, to a certain extent, change their colour, smell and other qualities, but put in a bad and inconvenient soil, they will not thrive, or but only imperfectly. The P. V. S. in India observes,—“ I have always been anxious to discover from the charts, whether there is a ‘peri°clicity’ jn the temperature of anthrax. There is no doubt that the bacilli appear in crops, appearing and disappearing at varying intervals, and I believe they hold possession of the system, probably in the shape of spores, for very long periods. We have a horse here which has gone through three attacks of anthrax, and shows now periodical crops of petechise on the mucous lining of the eye-lids, &c.”—an opinion I can fully endorse from my experience of anthrax in camels also, which I reported officially during 1885-6. The difficulty which must at first strike every one in regard to the action of these microzoa on the bodies of animals is the comparative rarity of acute symptoms in so many cases. The explanation which on many grounds has recommended itself, as accounting more satisfactorily for the phenomena observed, is that the injurious effects produced by mircrobes are due, not only to what they take or what they excrete, but what they leave in different cases, and this is closely associated with the imperious demand they make for oxygen. The bacilli anthracis being aerobic, they must obtain the oxygen they require for the process of life from the tissues by which they are surrounded ; and when oxygen is withdrawn from such'complex compounds as those which occur in the animal’s tissues, after an apparent fictitious improvement, the elements enter into new combinations, and then, under the name of ptomaines are believed to be the really poisonous agents. An animal’s body is capable of resisting the action of such foreign agents probably better than that of active and living germs, and so long as the poisonous chemical agents do not occur in excess, only partial, or modified harm comes from their action. The Principal Veterinary Sur¬ geon in India, in his D.O. dated,Umballa, 31st December, 1886, observes,—“Formerly only such cases as died were considered as anthrax, whilst numerous other cases occurred at the same time, which went unrecognised. Veterinary Surgeon Mann was one of the first, if not the first to bring this prominently to notice, and in an outbreak here, in N. B. Royal Horse Artillery, last year, in which the most careful taking of temperature of all horses was carried out, only a comparatively small percentage of deaths occurred, and these principally in the beginning. In the late outbreaks at Rawulpindee and Multan, the nature of the disease was clearly set at rest by demonstration of the bacillus anthracis, under the microscope.” POST MORTEM APPEARANCES. The blood was dark and viscid. In some of the larger vessels it formed into distinct, long clots—a similar condition having been described by Arloing in Cliavbon Symptomatique of the French. Ecchymoses in the sub-serous and sub-mucous tissues, but especially beneath the peri-and endo-cardium were constantly seen. V. S. (1st Class) Clayton also informs me that, in the latter situations, this lesion was never absent in a single case, his observations dating from August, 1886. The walls of the heart were soft and flabby, and the peri-cardial sac contained a large quantity of fluid. The lungs were the seat of conges¬ tion, and catarrhal inflammation, being enlarged and increased in weight, owing to consolida-