surface, round about which are numerous smaller vesicles which undergo similar changes, and the whole affected part becomes hard and tender, while the surrounding surface participates in the inflammatory action, and the neighbouring lymphatic glands are also inflamed. This condition, termed “malignant pustule,” is frequently accompanied with severe constitutional disturbance, in the form of fever, delirium, perspirations, together with great prostration and a tendency to death from septicaemia, although on the other hand recovery is not uncommon. It was repeatedly found that the matter taken from the vesicle during the progress of the disease, as well as the blood in the body after death, contained the Bacillus anthracis, and when inoculated into small animals produced rapid death, with all the symptoms and post-mortem appearances characteristic of the disease as known to affect them.
In internal anthrax there is no visible local manifestation of the disease, and the spores or bacilli appear to gain access to the system from the air charged with them, as in rooms where the contaminated wool or hair is unpacked, or again during the process of sorting. The symptoms usually observed are those of rapid physical prostration, with a small pulse, somewhat lowered temperature (rarely fever), and quickened breathing. Examination of the chest reveals inflammation of the lungs and pleura. In some cases death takes place by collapse in less than one day, while in others the fatal issue is postponed for three or four days, and is preceded by symptoms of blood-poisoning, including rigors, perspirations, extreme exhaustion, &c. In some cases of internal anthrax the symptoms are more intestinal than pulmonary, and consist in severe exhausting diarrhoea, with vomiting and rapid sinking. Recovery from the internal variety, although not unknown, is more rare than from the external, and its most striking phenomena are its sudden onset in the midst of apparent health, the rapid development of physical prostration, and its tendency to a fatal termination despite treatment. The post-mortem appearances in internal anthrax are such as are usually observed in septicaemia, but in addition evidence of extensive inflammation of the lungs, pleura and bronchial glands has in most cases been met with. The blood and other fluids and the diseased tissues are found loaded with the Bacillus anthracis.
Treatment in this disease appears to be of but little avail, except as regards the external form, where the malignant pustule may be excised or dealt with early by strong caustics to destroy the affected textures. For the relief of the general constitutional symptoms, quinine, stimulants and strong nourishment appear to be the only available means. An anti-anthrax serum has also been tried. As preventive measures in woollen manufactories, the disinfection of suspicious material, or the wetting of it before handling, is recommended as lessening the risk to the workers. (J. Mac.)
ANTHROPOID APES, or Manlike Apes, the name given to the family of the Simiidae, because, of all the ape-world, they most closely resemble man. This family includes four kinds, the gibbons of S.E. Asia, the orangs of Borneo and Sumatra, the gorillas of W. Equatorial Africa, and the chimpanzees of W. and Central Equatorial Africa. Each of these apes resembles man most in some one physical characteristic: the gibbons in the formation of the teeth, the orangs in the brain-structure, the gorillas in size, and the chimpanzees in the sigmoid flexure of the spine. In general structure they all closely resemble human beings, as in the absence of tails; in their semi-erect position (resting on finger-tips or knuckles); in the shape of vertebral column, sternum and pelvis; in the adaptation of the arms for turning the palm uppermost at will; in the possession of a long vermiform appendix to the short caecum of the intestine; in the size of the cerebral hemispheres and the complexity of their convolutions. They differ in certain respects, as in the proportion of the limbs, in the bony development of the eyebrow ridges, and in the opposable great toe, which fits the foot to be a climbing and grasping organ.
Man differs from them in the absence of a hairy coat; in the development of a large lobule to the external ear; in his fully erect attitude; in his flattened foot with the non-opposable great toe; in the straight limb-bones; in the wider pelvis; in the marked sigmoid flexure of his spine; in the perfection of the muscular movements of the arm; in the delicacy of hand; in the smallness of the canine teeth and other dental peculiarities; in the development of a chin; and in the small size of his jaws compared to the relatively great size of the cranium. Together with man and the baboons, the anthropoid apes form the group known to science as Catarhini, those, that is, possessing a narrow nasal septum, and are thus easily distinguishable from the flat-nosed monkeys or Platyrhini. The anthropoid apes are arboreal and confined to the Old World. They are of special interest from the important place assigned to them in the arguments of Darwin and the Evolutionists. It is generally admitted now that no fundamental anatomical difference can be proved to exist between these higher apes and man, but it is equally agreed that none probably of the Simiidae is in the direct line of human ancestry. There is a great gap to be bridged between the highest anthropoid and the lowest man, and much importance has been attached to the discovery of an extinct primate, Pithecanthropus (q.v.), which has been regarded as the “missing link.”
See Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature (1863); Robt. Hartmann’s Anthropoid Apes (1883; London, 1885); A. H. Keane’s Ethnology (1896); Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871; pop. ed., 1901); Haeckel’s Anthropogeny (Leipzig, 1874, 1903; Paris, 1877; Eng. ed., 1883); W. H. Flower and Rich. Lydekker, Mammals Living and Extinct (London, 1891).
ANTHROPOLOGY (Gr. ἄνθρωπος man, and λόγος, theory or science), the science which, in its strictest sense, has as its object the study of man as a unit in the animal kingdom. It is distinguished from ethnology, which is devoted to the study of man as a racial unit, and from ethnography, which deals with the distribution of the races formed by the aggregation of such units. To anthropology, however, in its more general sense as the natural history of man, ethnology and ethnography may both be considered to belong, being related as parts to a whole.
Various other sciences, in conformity with the above definition, must be regarded as subsidiary to anthropology, which yet hold their own independent places in the field of knowledge. Thus anatomy and physiology display the structure and functions of the human body, while psychology investigates the operations of the human mind. Philology deals with the general principles of language, as well as with the relations between the languages of particular races and nations. Ethics or moral science treats of man’s duty or rules of conduct toward his fellow-men. Sociology and the science of culture are concerned with the origin and development of arts and sciences, opinions, beliefs, customs, laws and institutions generally among mankind within historic time; while beyond the historical limit the study is continued by inferences from relics of early ages and remote districts, to interpret which is the task of prehistoric archaeology and geology.
I. Man’s Place in Nature.—In 1843 Dr J. C. Prichard, who perhaps of all others merits the title of founder of modern anthropology, wrote in his Natural History of Man:—
“The organized world presents no contrasts and resemblances more remarkable than those which we discover on comparing mankind with the inferior tribes. That creatures should exist so nearly approaching to each other in all the particulars of their physical structure, and yet differing so immeasurably in their endowments and capabilities, would be a fact hard to believe, if it were not manifest to our observation. The differences are everywhere striking: the resemblances are less obvious in the fulness of their extent, and they are never contemplated without wonder by those who, in the study of anatomy and physiology, are first made aware how near is man in his physical constitution to the brutes. In all the principles of his internal structure, in the composition and functions of his parts, man is but an animal. The lord of the earth, who contemplates the eternal order of the universe, and aspires to communion with its invisible Maker, is a being composed of the same materials, and framed on the same principles, as the creatures which he has tamed to be the servile instruments of his will, or slays for his daily food. The points of resemblance are innumerable; they extend to the most recondite arrangements of that mechanism which maintains instrumentally the physical life of the body, which
