Malignant Pustule

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 4, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 42.

Malignant Pustule.

A PATIENT suffering from this disease died recently in Guy's Hospital, London. He was employed on a wharf, in the handling of foreign hides, and undoubtedly contracted the disease from the hide of an animal which had been affected with the disease known by the French as charbon, by the Germans milzbrand, but by English-speaking people as anthrax. The patient noticed a pimple on the back of his neck, which in twenty-four hours became greatly enlarged, and the glands of the neck were swollen. The surgeons removed the enlarged pimple at once, but without avail, the man dying in about four days from the time he first noticed the pimple. This disease may also be contracted by the bite of an insect, a fly for instance, which has been feeding upon the carcass of an infected animal. The microbe of the disease is a bacillus (Bacillus anthracis), and was observed in the blood of cattle as long ago as 1849, by Pollender, although its importance was first recognized by Davaine, in 1850.—Scientific American.