Page 2 of 6

In 1850, Pierre-Francoise Olive Rayer and Casimir-Joseph Davaine reported the presence of "small filiform bodies" in the blood of anthrax-infected sheep. Five years later, Franz Aloys Antoine Pollender confirmed this discovery and speculated that these bodies might cause anthrax. In 1858, Freidrich August Brauell noted that these "small filiform bodies" never appeared in healthy animals or in animals infected with diseases other than anthrax. Brauell also noted that pregnant sheep who were infected with anthrax did not transmit the disease to their fetuses.

By the mid 1870s, most researchers believed that anthrax was an infectious disease but there was still disagreement as to its specific cause. In 1876, Robert Koch, a Prussian physician, isolated the anthrax bacillus and pointed out that the bacillus could form spores which remained viable, even in hostile environments. According to Koch, "this remove[d] all doubt that Bacillus anthracis is the actual cause and contagium of anthrax." Shortly after this, John Bell linked anthrax with "woolsorter disease" and developed a procedure to disinfect wool.

William Greenfield was the first to immunize livestock successfully against anthrax in 1880. However, credit for the use of a live vaccine against anthrax is usually given to Louis Pasteur who tested a heat-cured vaccine on sheep in 1881. Celebrated in the contemporary French press, Pasteur's vaccine solidified his status as one of France's greatest scientists. By the late twentieth century, extensive animal vaccination programs led to an overall decline in anthrax although the disease still occurred in poor and unstable regions (between 1978 and 1980, for example, a civil war in Zimbabwe caused a breakdown in veterinary care which then resulted in an anthrax epidemic which spread from animals to humans).

continue