History Of Anthrax

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INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY
Anthrax is a zoonotic disease caused by the bacteria Bacillus anthracis. The disease occurs in both domesticated and wild animals, primarily herbivores, including goats, sheep, cattle, horses and swine. Humans usually become infected by contact with an infected animal or from contaminated animal products. Most commonly infection occurs via the cutaneous route and occasionally via the respiratory or gastrointestinal route.
Anthrax has a long association with human history. The fifth and sixth plagues described in Exodus may have been anthrax in domesticated animals followed by cutaneous anthrax in humans. The disease that Virgil described in his Georgics is clearly anthrax in domestic and wild animals. (Dirckx)
Anthrax was intimately associated with the origins of microbiology and immunology, being the first disease for which a microbial origin was definitively established, in 1876 by Robert Koch. (Koch) It also was the first disease for which an effective live bacterial vaccine was developed, in 1881, by Louis Pasteur. (Pasteur) During the latter half of the 19th century, a previously unrecognized form of anthrax appeared for the first time. This type was inhalation anthrax. This occurred among woolsorters in England, due to the generation of infectious aerosols of anthrax spores under industrial conditions, from the processing of contaminated goat hair and alpaca wool. It probably represents the first described occupational respiratory infectious disease. (Laforce)
Owing to the infectiousness of anthrax spores by the respiratory route and the high mortality of inhalational anthrax, the military’s concern with anthrax is with its potential use as a biological weapon. This concern was heightened by the revelation that the largest epidemic of inhalation anthrax in the century, in Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1979, occurred after anthrax spores were released from a military research facility loc...