Glossanthrax (Carbuncle of the Tongue, Malignant Pustule of the Tongue)

This is a special variety of gangrenous ulcerative glossitis, presenting as an integral phenomenon of a disease peculiar to slaughterers, who become infected from diseased cattle, usually by means of the knife, which they are sometimes in the habit of holding in the mouth (Heyfelder and others). It has been described chiefly by Heyfelder, Duhamel, Chavarrien d'Audebert, Felix Plata, Breschet et Finot, and Maisonneuve.

Med. Vereins Zeitung, 1834.

Des Tumeurs de la Langue, Paris, 1848, Thèse de Concours.

The period of incubation occupies about one day. The tongue then undergoes rapid tumefaction and becomes the seat of intense pain. The points of inoculation become hard, covered with vesicles containing bloody serum, which blacken, rupture, and leave dark, livid, gangrenous patches of ulceration. Profound cachexia rapidly ensues under typhoid manifestations, and death may result in less than twenty-four hours, though usually not until sixty hours. The prognosis, therefore, is of the gravest character.

The chief treatment consists in thorough cauterization of the inoculated points by means of the actual cautery, followed by deep incisions into the body of the tongue if the glossitis be severe.