Agricultural History Review, Volume 52 Part 2 (2004), p. 227

Cattle plague, or rinderpest, is caused by a virus, one of six related species in the genus morbillivirus, the others being measles in humans, which appeared over 5000years ago when humans began to associate with cattle, canine distemper, cetacean morbillivirus – a disease of whales, phocine distemper affecting seals, and peste des petits ruminants (PPR), a disease of sheep and goats that in the past has been confused with rinderpest. A wide range of cloven-hoofed animals, from bison, yak, antelope, deer 228 the agricultural and camels, to sheep, goats and pigs, can act as hosts for the disease. The virus enters the body of an affected animal through the upper respiratory tract and goes on to attack the cells lining the respiratory, alimentary and urogenital tracts, producing fever, gastroenteristis, discharges from the eyes and nose, and, very often, diarrhoea, dehydration and death.

The historical significance of rinderpest derives not only from its immediate effects on cattle populations and, consequently, their human consumers, but also from its impact on the history of veterinary medicine and legislation, and its environmental effects. There are recorded outbreaks of what are variously described as plagues, pests, distempers, diseases, and murrains of cattle from ancient times, and all over Europe. Whether these are all attributable to rinderpest is less certain, because the symptoms described could often equally apply to other fatal conditions such as anthrax. It seems to be generally accepted, however, that rinderpest was probably responsible for the great mortality of cattle in Britain between 1315 and 1317, and further outbreaks later in the century. It was certainly the cause of the better-known eighteenth-century outbreaks that began in 1714 and 1745, and of the epidemic that killed over 278,000 head of cattle between 1865 and 1867 and led to the establishment of a government-run slaughter policy. But these British outbreaks, significant as they were at the time, seem relatively minor in comparison to the prevalence and persistence of the disease in continental Europe and Asia. Spinage’s list of animal disease episodes in Europe that could be associated with rinderpest covers more than two pages for the period between 431 bc and 1514 ad, and he then has a further five chapters covering the better-documented outbreaks from the seventeenth century to the twentieth, when the last occurrence (in Greece, in 1926) was known. In Asia, it appears to have been endemic from early times to the later twentieth century.

Given the ease and speed with which it can spread, and the resultant mortality (up to 90 per cent in some cases), it is not difficult to see why rinderpest has had significant economic effects, often accentuated by its association with war. When armies moved slowly enough to drive their food supplies with them on the hoof, they were often the cause of its spread. Ironically, one of the few benefits of mechanized warfare in the twentieth century was a reduction in the spread of rinderpest in Europe, since live cattle could no longer keep up with the troops. Rinderpest has also, and perhaps to a greater extent than any other disease, been the starting point for much progress in veterinary medical knowledge and legislation. One of the first effective campaigns to control it was instigated in the Papal States history review in1713. The Pope, acting on the advice of his surgeon, Lancisi, introduced strict regulations covering the movement of cattle, with stringent punishments for their contravention: laymen could be sentenced to death, although clergymen escaped with banishment to the galleys for life. In mid-eighteenth-century England, in contrast, movement restrictions and slaughter were encouraged by compensation payments. The methods may have been different, but the long term implications were the same: a greater interest in finding explanations and control methods for animal diseases, leading in time to increased veterinary competence and government involvement in public health. Spinage covers the original sources for these and other outbreaks in great detail. In Part One of the book he examines the science of the disease and its origin; in the following two parts he deals with its history in Europe and the attempts to control it there; and in part four he deals with the search for a cure.

Much of the final part of the book is concerned withthe history of rinderpest in Africa, where it has alsobeen associated with a controversy in environmental history. It was unknown south of the Sahara, in one view, until it was introduced in 1887 as a by-product of the Italian invasion of Eritrea; within a decade it had reached the far south and west of the continent. Millions of cattle and many of the people who depended upon them died, and bush expanded at the expense of grassland. Populations of the tsetse fly, a carrier of sleeping sickness, could expand more quickly in the lusher vegetation of the bush, and so prevented the return of people and their cattle; hence the European view of an unspoilt empty Africa teeming with game, and many subsequent conservation policies. Spinage demonstrates that the story may be more complex than this, for there is some evidence for the existence of rinderpest south of the Sahara before the late nineteenth century. But in this, as in other parts of the book, he does not come down decisively on one side or the other. Indeed, throughout the book, he presents the evidence, usually in great and well-referenced detail, without much discussion of its wider implications or reliability. It seems churlish to complain, for it is difficult to believe that anything of great significance specific to cattle plague has been omitted from this book, but it makes few concessions to the reader without specialist veterinary knowledge, and engages only sporadically with historical debates. It is a wonderfully comprehensive source, but those wishing to work further on the history of thecattle plague need not feel that there is nothing left to say.