Cattle plagues past and present: The mystery of mad cow disease

Journal of Contemporary History

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 215-228

  Fisher, John R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0012779754     PISSN: 00220094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002200949803300202     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. For speculation on the nature of the Black Death and the dissemination of bubonic plague see J.F.D. Shrewsbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge 1970)
2. Andrew B. Appleby, 'The Disappearance of Plague: A Continuing Puzzle', Economic History Review, 33 (1980), 161-73
3. and David E. Davis, 'The Scarcity of Rats and the Black Death: An Ecological History', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XVI (1986), 455-70
4. Lucy Taksa, 'The Masked Disease: Oral History, Memory and the Influenza Pandemic 1918-1919' in K. Darian-Smith and P. Hamilton (eds), Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia (Sydney 1991), 77-91
5. Arien Mack, 'Editor's Introduction' to symposium papers on 'In Time of Plague', Social Research, 55 (1988), 323-7
6. Calvin W. Schwabe, Cattle, Priests and Progress in Medicine (Minneapolis 1978), 19-21
7. R.H. Dunlop and D.J. Williams, Veterinary Medicine: An Illustrated History (St. Louis, MO 1996), 277-81
8. Pule Phoofolo, 'Epidemics and Revolutions: The Rinderpest Epidemic in Late Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa', Past and Present, 138 (1993), 112-43
9. C.S. Orwin and E.H. Whetham, History of British Agriculture 1846-1914 (1964), 200-2
10. The Economist, 30 April 1996; Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (MAFF), Programme to Eradicate BSE in the United Kingdom (London 1996), 6-7
11. The Economist, 31 August 1996
12. R.M. Anderson et al., 'Transmission Dynamics and Epidemiology of BSE in British Cattle', Nature, 382 (1996), 779-88
13. John Collinge et al., 'Molecular Analysis of Prion Strain Variation and the Aetiology of "New Variant" CJD', Nature, 383 (1996), 685-90
14. for the close correspondence between BSE and the new encephalopathy in humans. David C.G. Skegg, 'Epidemic or false alarm', Nature, 385 (1997), 200, for an estimate (admittedly on a small information base) of between 100 and 80,000 deaths over the course of a BSE 'epidemic'
15. J.R Fisher, 'British Physicians, Medical Science, and the Cattle Plague, 1865-66', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 67, 1993, 673-5
16. L. Garrett, The Coming Plague (London 1993), 281-390
17. Julian Cribb, The White Death: On the Origins of AIDS (Sydney 1995)
18. A.D. Weaver, 'Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy: Farmers' Attitude to the UK Control Programme' in Proceedings of the 18th World Buiatrics Congress (Bologna 1994), 789-91
19. John W. Wilesmith, 'BSE - Epidemiologic Approaches, Trials and Tribulations', Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 18 (1993), 33-42
20. J.W. Wilesmith in Veterinary Record, 27 August 1996
21. Institute of Food Science and Technology, 'Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE): Part 1/3' at http://www.easynet.co.uk/ifst/hottop5/htm
22. W.W. Clark, J.L. Hourrigan and W.J. Hadlow, 'Encephalopathy in Cattle Experimentally Infected with the Scrapie Agent', American Journal of Veterinary Research, 56 (1995), 606-12
23. Veterinary Record, 27 July 1996
24. Brian J. Ford, BSE - The Facts: Mad Cow Disease and the Risk to Mankind (London 1996), 41 and 162
25. See also M. Purdey, 'Are Organophosphate Pesticides Involved in the Causation of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)?', Journal of Nutritional Medicine, vol. 4, 1994, 43-82. The credibility of the Purdey thesis, originally coolly received (New Scientist, 26 August 1994), on the role of organophosphates as a trigger for BSE, seems to have increased: see discussions at http//www.healthnet.org/promed-hma/0656.html and Farmers' Weekly, 14 and 28 February 1997
26. R.W. Lacey and Steve Dealler, 'Vertical Transfer of Prion Disease', Human Reproduction, 9 (1994), 1792-6
27. R.W. Lacey, 'Creutzfeldt-Jakob-Disease and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy - Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy is Being Maintained by Vertical and Horizontal Transmission', British Medical Journal, 307 (1996), 180-1
28. Guardian Weekly, 11 August 1996
29. The Lancet, 25 September 1993; S.B. Prusiner, 'Molecular-biology of Prion Diseases', Science, 252 (1991), 1515-22
30. 'Biology and Genetics of Prion Diseases', Annual Review of Microbiology, XLVIII (1994), 655-86
31. Rosie Mestel, 'Putting Prions to the Test', Science, 273 (1996), 184-9
32. The Economist, 18 January 1997
33. R.F. Marsh, 'Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in the United States', Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 196 (1990), 1677; Nature, 3 February 1994
34. J. Cherfas, 'Mad Cow Disease: Uncertainty Rules', Science, 249 (1990), 1492-3
35. R. G. Will et al., 'A new variant of Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease in the UK', Lancet, 337 (1996), 921-5
36. Dorothy Nelkin and S.L. Gilman, 'Placing Blame for Devastating Disease', Social Research, 55(1988), 362
37. Paul Slack, 'Responses to Plague in Early Modern Europe: The Implications of Public Health', Social Research, 55 (1988), 433-53
38. Science, 28 September 1990; Private Eye, 17 June 1992
39. New Scientist, 9 June 1990
40. The Economist, 3 February 1990
41. Peter Atkins and Paul Brassley, 'Mad Cows and Englishmen', History Today, XLVI (1996), 14-17
42. Nature, 9 September 1993
43. See also The Times, 23 January 1866, for Gladstone's proposals for a stockowners' fund to pay compensation
44. J.R. Fisher, 'The Economic Effects of Cattle Disease in Britain and its Containment, 1850-1900', Agricultural History, LIV (1980), 278-94
45. Veterinary Record, 29 June 1995; Farmers' Weekly, 5 April 1996. Responses to the same imperatives have led to the restructuring of meat inspection services throughout Western Europe, North America and Australasia
46. Arno Karlen, Plagues and Progress (London 1996)
47. see also Cockburn, 'A Short Meat-Orientated History of the World: From Eden to the Marrole', New Left Review, 215 (1996), 16-42
48. New Scientist, 30 March 1996
49. Speeches by the president of the British Veterinary Association in Farmers' Weekly, 19 April 1996 and Veterinary Record, 27 April 1996
50. See also J.R. Fisher, 'Of Plagues and Veterinarians: BSE in Historical Perspective', Argos, 16 (1997), 225-35
51. See, for example, Farmers' Weekly, 14, 21 and 28 February 1997
52. Nature, 17 October 1996
53. Roy Porter, Disease, Medicine and Society in England, 1550-1860 (2nd edn, London 1993), 17-26
54. J.R. Fisher, 'Not Quite A Profession: The Aspirations of Veterinary Surgeons in Britain in the Mid-Nineteenth Century', Historical Research, LXVI (1993), 284-7
55. John Broad, 'Cattle Plague in Eighteenth-Century England', Agricultural History Review, XXXI (1983), 104-15
56. Sherwin Hall, 'The Great Cattle Plague of 1865', British Veterinary Journal, 122 (1966), 259-66
57. Michael Worboys, 'Germ Theories of Disease and British Veterinary Medicine, 1860-1890', Medical History, XXXV (1991), 308-27