[a. L. anthrax a carbuncle, a. Gr. ἄνθραξ coal, a carbuncle.]
1. A carbuncle, or malignant boil.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., VII. lix. (1495), 275. Antrax is a postume whyche cometh of ful wood matere and venemous … It is callyd also Carbunculus, for it brennyth as a cole.
1543. Traheron, Vigo’s Chirurg., II. xix. 29. Anthrax is a malygne pustle, havynge about it certayne lytle yelowe veynes of the coloure of the rayne bowe.
1706. Phillips, Anthrax … a Carbuncle swelling … that arises in several Parts surrounded with fiery, sharp, and painful Pimples.
1871. Bryant, Pract. Surg., I. 171. Anthrax of the lips has nothing in common with malignant pustule.
2. The ‘splenic fever’ of sheep and cattle, recently discovered by M. Pasteur to result from the introduction of minute organisms into the blood of the animal, and their rapid reproduction there. Also applied to the carbuncular disease, otherwise called malignant pustule, caused in man by infection from animals so affected.
1876. trans. Wagner’s Gen. Pathol., 4. Infection … from a diseased animal, e.g. glanders, anthrax, and hydrophobia.
1880. 19th Cent., Nov., 858. Selecting sheep of the very breed most liable to anthrax, and inoculating them with plasma taken from animals which had died of the disease.
1882. Standard, 29 Dec., 2/2. The third case was one of external anthrax in … a … wool-comber.
