ANTHRAX

A candidate culprit for the fifth biblical plague in Egypt, anthrax is a bacterium that infects sheep, cattle and other livestock, spreading to humans exposed to an infected animal’s fur, pelt or meat. Spores enter skin wounds, causing ulcers with a characteristic black core (hence the etymology, anthrax being Greek for “coal”). When the spore is swallowed or inhaled, mortality soars without antibiotics from 25% to 80%. Prior to the development of the first effective vaccine by Louis Pasteur, and then antibiotics, anthrax killed hundreds of thousands of people and livestock a year.