ZOONOSES Partners in Agricultural Health Module VI

The malicious distribution of anthrax spores through the mail in the United States during the fall of 2001 acutely heightened awareness of anthrax as a bioterrorist agent. However, anthrax has been recognized for thousands of years as a naturally occurring zoonotic disease of people exposed to infected animals or contaminated animal products. The 5th and 6th biblical plagues are thought to have been systemic and cutaneous anthrax, respectively, Virgil described outbreaks of anthrax-like disease among people and animals in Rome in 70 BC, and references were made repeatedly to anthrax in the “Hippokratika,” a series of writing about animal health that was produced in the 900s AD. Finally, this disease is famous in the history of science because Koch’s postulates were defined in 1876 using anthrax as the model infection.