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Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 00:02:01 +0200
From: Robert Dyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

John Geyssen a écrit :

> Probably so named because of his lack of cooking skills since anthrax means
> charcoal in Greek.
> jg

That is the reason why the French name for the disease is "charbon"
(charcoal). In
ancient Greek medical writings 'anthrax' is applied to malignant, dark
pustules, perhaps those of any fatal disease, although the modern symptoms
of the skin infection of the disease anthrax are indeed charcoal-colored
pustules at the point of entry. Modern encyclopedias say that the disease
owes its name to the black color of the organs of animals and humans killed
by this bacterium, whose scientific name is Bacillus anthracis. According
to these encyclopedias, the disease known by this name was identified in
the 18th Century, and Pasteur was the first to vaccinate against it.

In the Georgics, Vergil describes a plague that destroys the cattle of the
hard-working farmer, thus destroying the fruit of all his labor
(3.478-566). The
reason to believe that this plague is anthrax comes from lines 507-508, where
Vergil adds to the description on which the passage is based (Nicander,
Theriaca
301-2) that the blood issuing from the dying horse's nostrils is ater 'black'.
Black blood appears an echo of the term anthrax. This would then suggest that
ancient medical observation correctly identified charcoal-colored organs
and blood of dead animals as symptoms of this particular plague.
This cannot be taken as certain proof that ancient doctors, and Vergil,
understood the characteristics of the plague now known as anthrax, but I
accept it as plausible. I have always taught that the disease descibed in
the Georgics is probably anthrax, a disease that struck cattle on the farms
where I grew up in Northland, New Zealand, and indeed is accurately
described by Vergil.

Robert R. Dyer
Paris, France

Here is the poet Cecil Day Lewis's translation of some of the passage:
"The horse, a prize-winner once, takes no more pride in his paces,
Forgets the grass, turns awy from water, keeps on stamping
The ground; sweat comes and goes on his dejected ears--
A cold sweat meaning death.
The hide feels dry if you stroke him, stubborn and harsh to the touch.
Such are the earlier signs he gives of a mortal sickness.
But when the disease begins to reach a deadlier stage,
The eyes are inflamed, the breath comes deep and dragging, broken
By heavy groans, the long flanks heave with profound sobs,
Out of the nostrils oozes
Black blood, the tongue is rough and swells in the throat and blocks it....
Watch that bull, steaming from the weight of the iron coulter!
He drops in his tracks, his mouth drools with bloody foam,
A last groan lifts to heaven. Sadly the ploughman goes
To unyoke the bullock mourning his butty's death...
Slowly the neck droops dispirited to the ground.
He toiled for us and served us, he turned the difficult earth
With the plough,-- and what does it profit him?"
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