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A chronic contagious affection of the skin, prevalent in the tropics.

ce of a rod-shaped bacterium (Bacillus anthracis), the spores of which constitute the contagious matter. It may be transmitted to man by inoculation. The spleen becomes greatly enlarged and filled with bacteria. Called also splenic fever.

Preventing the contagion of smallpox.

A direction equivalent to very; as, adagio assai, very slow.

To affect or infect, as with physical or mental disease or with moral contagion; to taint or corrupt. My tender youth was never yet attaint With any passion of inflaming love. Shak.

d; to shun; to refuse; to let go by; to shirk. [Obs. or Obsolescent] By reason of the contagion then in London, we balked the Evelyn. Sick he is, and keeps his bed, and balks his meat. Bp. Hall. Nor doth he any creature balk, But lays on all he meeteth. Drayton.

To take or receive; esp. to take by sympathy, contagion, infection, or exposure; as, to catch the spirit of an occasion; to catch the measles or smallpox; to catch cold; the house caught fire.

Infections; contagious.

imes marked by a cutaneous eruption, when it is often called spotted fever. It is not contagious.

A very contagious and fatal disease of sheep, horses, and cattle. See Maligmant pustule.

hild; esp. a young woman; a maiden. "Stella is no chicken." Swift. Chicken cholera, a contagious disease of fowls; - - so called because first studied during the prevalence of a cholera epidemic in France. It has no resemblance to true cholera.

ps. When lust . . . Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion. Milton.

Contagion; contagious matter. "Contagium of measles." Tyndall.

A very dangerous contagious disease in which the air passages, and especially the throat, become coated with a false membrane, produced by the solidification of an inflammatory exudation. Cf. Group.

To free from infectious or contagious matter; to destroy putrefaction; to purify; to make innocuous. When the infectious matter and the infectious matter and the odoriferous matter are one . . . then to deodorize is to disinfect. Ure.

(Jason). Though the former legal pollution be now done off, yet there is a spiritual contagion in idolatry as much to be shunned. Milton. It ["Pilgrim's Progress"] has been done into verse: it has been done into modern English. Macaulay.

ly from a single point, spreads gradually over its surface. It is usually regarded as contagious, and often occurs epidemically.

A contagious disease of horses, associated with painful ulcerating enlargements, esp. upon the head and limbs. It is of the same nature as glanders, and is often fatal. Called also farcin, and farcimen.

Any substance supposed to be capable of absorbing, retaining, and transporting contagious or infectious germs; as, woolen clothes are said to be active fomites.

(Med.) The theory which attributes contagious and infectious diseases, suppurative lesions, etc., to the agency of germs. The science of bacteriology was developed after this theory had been established.