Medical classicsThe history of anthrax☆
Section snippets
Early history
Anthrax is a potentially fatal infection caused by the Gram-positive toxigenic spore-forming Bacillus anthracis, a bacterium to which all warm-blooded animals are susceptible. It is a virulent and highly contagious disease, though there are no known cases of human-to-human transmission. Anthrax endospores are resistant to drying, heat, ultraviolet light, gamma radiation, and many disinfectants (1). There are cutaneous, inhalation, and gastrointestinal forms of the illness, which occur when
Recent history
Early that same year, reports appeared in the Western press of an anthrax epidemic having occurred the year before in Sverdlovsk, near a Soviet military microbiology facility. Subsequent articles in Soviet professional publications spoke of an outbreak among livestock near the city in the spring of 1979, with some of the surrounding population subsequently developing gastrointestinal anthrax after eating contaminated meat, or cutaneous anthrax after contact with diseased animals (11). This
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Medical Classics is coordinated by George Sternbach, md, of Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford, California