Focusing on three Anglo-American outbreaks of industrial anthrax, this essay 
engages the question of how local circumstances influenced the transmission of 
scientific knowledge in the late nineteenth century. Walpole (Massachusetts), 
Glasgow, and Bradford (Yorkshire) served as important nodes of transnational 
investigation into anthrax. Knowledge about the morphology and behavior of 
Bacillus anthracis changed little while in transit between these nodes, even 
during complex debates about the nature of bacterial morphology, disease 
causation, and spontaneous generation. Working independently of their more 
famous counterparts (Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur), Anglo-American anthrax 
investigators used visual representations of anthrax bacilli to persuade their 
peers that a specific, identifiable cause produced all forms of 
anthrax-malignant pustule (cutaneous anthrax), intestinal anthrax, and 
woolsorter's disease (pneumonic anthrax). By the late 1870s, this point of view 
also supported what we would today call an ecological notion of the disease's 
origins in the interactions of people, animals, and microorganisms in the 
context of global commerce.