Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Great Epizootic of 1872 About this episode The epizootic of 1872 was a massive outbreak of a flulike illness primarily among horses in North America, Central America, and some islands in the Caribbean.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:10 Tracy V. Wilson? The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Vive Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jess A. strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune into Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2:38 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:48 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:52 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:54 Tracy V. Wilson? A few weeks ago, listener Colin wrote in to ask for an episode on the great Epizootic of 1872. I imagine this might have been inspired by the current situation with avian flu, but I did not ask. An Epizootic is an epidemic, but in non-human animals. And this one was a massive outbreak of a flu-like illness that was primarily among horses. It was in North America, Central America, and some of the islands in the Caribbean. There were also a lot of different names for this 1872 outbreak as it was happening. A big
3:32 Tracy V. Wilson? one was just the Epizootic, or the Epizootic, which makes it sound sillier than it was to me. Since it was first reported in Canada, people also called it Canadian Horse Disease. There was also Horse Quatar, Quatarial Fever, Mucus Fever, Distemper, Blitzquatar, Le Grip, and Horse Influenza. Most of the horses that got this disease recovered, but this did still lead to the deaths of tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of horses and other equines, and it caused massive disruptions all across the continent.
4:12 Holly Frey? Written records of disease in horses go back more than 1,000 years, and records of flu-like epidemic horse diseases date back to at least the 13th century. But unless someone unearths a viable sample and tests it, we don't really have a way to know which specific pathogen caused any of these past diseases, or whether it was the same one that caused the 1872 Epizootic. People documented epidemics in horses for more than 500 years before the germ theory of disease started to develop in the 19th century. Although the word "virus" was already in use, the identification of specific viruses didn't happen until the 1890s. That was about two decades after this outbreak.
4:58 Holly Frey? So, most of this history happened before people had the ability to pinpoint a specific pathogen, especially a specific virus, as the cause of an outbreak.
5:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Today, the most common explanation for the great Epizootic of 1872 is equine influenza, which is caused by the influenza A virus. Influenza A is one virus species, but it has a lot of different strains, and some of those strains are very closely related to one another. In addition to causing equine influenza, strains of influenza A can also cause highly pathogenic avian influenza, as well as seasonal flu in humans. And it also causes other flu-like diseases, mainly among birds and mammals.
5:46 Holly Frey? Some of the historical outbreaks of flu-like diseases in horses happened at the same time as outbreaks of similar disease in both human and non-human animals. This could have been from the equine virus infecting other species, or from a non-equine virus infecting horses, or from multiple strains of influenza that all happened to be circulating at the same time.
6:11 Tracy V. Wilson? That is happening now as we are recording this. We, we have a lot of influenza A especially, but also influenza B that's causing seasonal flu in the U.S. and also avian influenza happening at the same time. This episodic happened during the early years of veterinary education in North America. We have an episode on the history of veterinary medicine that we replayed as a Saturday classic in May of 2022, but briefly, until the start of the 19th century, there were no veterinary colleges in North America. Large animals like horses were primarily being cared for by farriers or by people who
6:56 Tracy V. Wilson? had been living and working with animals for a long time, like farmers and stable hands or people who had trained in human medicine. Veterinary colleges started to be established in North America in the latter half of the 19th century, but the first doctor of veterinary medicine degree to be awarded in the U.S. didn't happen until 1876. So that was four years after this outbreak started. So a lot of the veterinarians who wrote and offered advice about this episodic as it was happening were people who had immigrated to North America from Europe, where colleges of veterinary medicine date back to the mid 18th century.
7:39 Holly Frey? One was James Law, Chair of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery at Cornell University. He had immigrated to the U.S. from Scotland to accept that position in 1867, when Cornell's veterinary program was first established. He wrote a report on the episodic that described its symptoms this way, quote, "A horse in apparently robust and vigorous health is seen with drooping head, ears and lips, semi-closed eyelids, expressionless countenance, and one or two legs partially flexed, as if to seek relief from his weariness. He stands in one position, or if urged to move, does so with reluctance, sluggishness, and often with unsteady swaying gait.
8:24 Holly Frey? The back is arched and rigid, the limbs carried stiffly, and the joints often crack." At the same time, there may be noticed a dry staring coat, a tenderness of the skin when handled, a tendency to coldness of the nose, ears, and limbs, and in exceptional cases, shivering, tremors, or even nervous jerking. A cough is always an early symptom, and in the visitation of 1872, it has been usually the first observed, as it was by far the most prominent of the early symptoms.
8:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Law described the disease as progressing to include a fever, rapid pulse that was usually weak and compressible, signs of dehydration, and accelerated breathing. A second phase of the illness typically included a worsening of all those initial symptoms, as well as discharge from the eyes and nose. Touching affected horses' throats seemed to cause them pain, and afterward they would often cough violently. After this phase of the illness, most horses recovered, with the disease lasting between two and three weeks. But there could also be various complications, including pneumonia, pleurisy, and abdominal
9:37 Tracy V. Wilson? issues, and this was especially the case in horses that were forced to continue working while they were sick.
9:44 Holly Frey? Alexandre Lyotard had also immigrated to the US, arriving from Paris in the 1850s to both practice veterinary medicine and earn his MD from University Medical College, which is now the New York University School of Medicine. In 1872, he was chief veterinary surgeon to the New York College of Veterinary Surgeons and a consultant to the Board of Health. He contributed to a report on the progress of the Epizootic in New York that included a description of just how sudden and widespread it was. He summarized the reports of the city's health inspectors as saying, quote, "One, that all or very nearly all the horses in the city were affected by the disease; two, that the
10:29 Holly Frey? symptoms appeared suddenly, not only invading nearly all the stables at once, but affecting at once nearly all the horses in each stable; and three, that the disease attacked impartially the well-housed and well-fed and those exposed to hardships."
10:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Leotire also wrote about how to treat the illness. Quote, "The treatment of influenza must be in accordance with the symptoms. During the simple catarrhal form of the disease, the diet should consist of dry or boiled oats, mashes, oat, rye, or cornmeal grules, roots, and fruits. These articles should be varied and given in small quantities. The temperature should be regulated by blanketing, bandaging of the extremities, and general or local friction. Good ventilation should be secured and disinfectants used in moderation."
11:21 Holly Frey? He went on to say, quote, "In the majority of cases, the hygienic measures above mentioned, together with rest, will prove entirely sufficient to effect a cure. Rest is of the utmost importance. Without it, the animal will scarcely escape some of the sequelae of the disease. Experience has taught me that rest is of paramount importance for all those animals whose labors were suspended as soon as they were taken sick, escaped complications, and resumed work in a few days. On the other hand, a large mortality occurred among railroad and stage horses. Many of these animals being kept constantly at work were attacked by serious complications,
12:03 Holly Frey? purpura hemorrhagic, being the most frequent and perhaps the most fatal."
12:08 Tracy V. Wilson? While rest was the primary treatment, Leotire also recommended various steps to try to reduce some of the horse's symptoms, like using liniments to relieve a sore throat, steaming with boiling water with various ingredients added to soothe coughs, and using preparations of antimony as an expectorant. James Law's treatment recommendations were very similar, really stressing the need for rest and offering ways to relieve some of the symptoms. Both men stressed that sick horses should not be bled or given any kind of purgatives. They needed to be supported and allowed to rest as soon as they became ill.
12:50 Tracy V. Wilson? Basically, this was a lot like the advice that's given to people who get the flu today, although there are some antiviral medications that are indicated for some people, and there are people who need to go to the hospital for further treatment if they become dehydrated or experience some other complications. But there were also a lot of quack cures advertised in newspapers and journals during this outbreak. The same kinds of patent medicines that were advertised to people for all kinds of ailments. These, of course, did not work, and some of them could be dangerous to the animals they were administered to. We will look at the way this outbreak progressed after a sponsor break.
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16:11 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter,
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17:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Most accounts from the 1870s say the epizootic started in Ontario, Canada, in areas north of Toronto in September of 1872. Much later, it was noted that there had also been some isolated outbreaks of horse illnesses in August as well. Those were in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, Hillsborough and Merrimack, New Hampshire, and Forsyth County, North Carolina. All of these states are on the east coast of the US, but otherwise, they are not very close together at all. And it's not really clear if these outbreaks were related to the epizootic or caused by the same pathogen.
17:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Regardless of whether those August cases were related or not, once the disease got to Toronto, it started spreading more widely. 14 cases were reported in Toronto on September 30th, and by October 11th, there were reports of sick horses in Niagara Falls, and on the next day, the disease had reached Ottawa.
18:18 Holly Frey? By this point, even though people hadn't figured out how to isolate and identify specific pathogens, the germ theory of disease was becoming more widely accepted. But flu-like illnesses were still something of an exception, especially in cases of widespread outbreaks like this one. It started very suddenly, sickening large numbers of animals seemingly all at once. Keepers reported whole stables of animals being sickened over less than 48 hours. And the illness wasn't spreading from one stall to the next, as though each horse was contracting it from the one next to them. It showed up all over. So initially, people thought it might be related to some kind of atmospheric condition or the weather, rather than any kind of contagion.
19:04 Tracy V. Wilson? But the outbreak quickly reached places that had a totally different landscape, climate, and weather than the parts of Canada that were first affected. On October 13th, the disease reached Detroit, Michigan, and Buffalo, New York. Half the horses in Rochester, New York were sick by the 17th, and by the 19th, the disease is in Syracuse. By October 22nd, it was in New York City and Boston. And it became very obvious that it was following transportation lines, specifically railroads and canals. Infection rates were massive, affecting at least 80% of horses, sometimes as many as
19:45 Tracy V. Wilson? 99%, as well as donkeys, mules, and even some circus animals like zebras.
19:51 Holly Frey? On October 28th, the disease was reported in Washington DC. By the start of November, the illness had hit Cleveland, Ohio, and Charleston, South Carolina. It was continuing to spread in Canada as well, reaching Halifax, Nova Scotia on November 4th. By the 11th, it was in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Savannah, Georgia. It reached Atlanta, Georgia, and Chattanooga, Tennessee on the 18th.
20:17 Tracy V. Wilson? The epizootic was reported in Havana, Cuba on December 7th. In early February of 1873, it reached Monterrey, Mexico. It didn't reach California until March, but by April, it had spread across much of the state. This included San Francisco, where it reached on April 19th, and by the 25th, all of the city's railroad horses were affected. The epizootic continued into Central America over the summer, reaching Guatemala in July and El Salvador in August.
20:51 Holly Frey? And the outbreak seems to have stopped there. By December of 1873, there had been no reports of the disease south of San Salvador. While we don't know the reasons for sure, this part of Central America wasn't as densely populated, with fewer horses and no railroads to rapidly carry animals from place to place before people realized they were sick. The Panama Railroad was built in 1855, but that was well over 1,000 kilometers away from the farthest south the Epizootic was reported. The Epizootic also didn't cross oceans. Given how quickly the illness struck, how fast it spread, and how long it lasted, any animals being transported across the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean
21:36 Holly Frey? likely would have recovered by the time that ship arrived. Or if not, their illness would have been obvious enough to keep the animals quarantined aboard the ship.
21:46 Tracy V. Wilson? A few places were exempt, and a lot of those were islands. The Epizootic never reached Prince Edward Islands because the seas around it were impassable due to ice when the disease was active in neighboring parts of Canada. On the opposite side of the continent, Vancouver Island established a quarantine and banned horses and mules from being brought onto the island. There were also no signs of the illness in Key West, Florida. While the disease did reach some Caribbean islands, it missed others, including Hispaniola and Jamaica. Parts of Mexico also seem to have been protected mainly by their geography, especially the southern part of the Baja California Peninsula
22:30 Tracy V. Wilson? and much of the Yucatan Peninsula.
22:33 Holly Frey? The rapid onset and dramatic infection rate of this disease made it possible for people to see how it was spreading as this was happening. Sometimes it was even possible to trace which specific horses had been the likely carriers of the disease as they were moved from place to place. Here's a paragraph from a report that was prepared for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Quote, "The first cases in Detroit were several sick horses brought from Canada about the 10th or 11th of October. Others were attacked in less than two days, and the malady appears to have been confined for nearly a week to the two stables into which the Canadian beasts were brought." The first cases in Syracuse were in newly arrived Canadian horses,
23:16 Holly Frey? and the malady spread promptly in city and country. The earliest cases which I have been able to trace in Ithaca were in the livery stables of Mr. Jackson, who had just returned from running a mayor in a more northern part of the state. In Pittsburgh, the disease first appeared in the stables of Messrs. Moreland and Mitchell after the arrival of five or six horses from New York, when the epizootic was then at its height. In every instance, it spread rapidly in the new locality. From Washington, the first note of alarm was sounded on October 28th, to the effect that sick horses had been brought into the city from the north, and on November 3rd, it was reported to be generally prevalent.
23:58 Holly Frey? In Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, the malady appeared about November 4th, and spread like fire along the canal and into the surrounding country. On November 19th, it prevailed at points in Giles, Rutherford, Maury, Davidson, and Sumner Counties, Tennessee, which had been recently visited by a circus, coming from an infected locality, and while the general district was free. At Newark, Delaware, the first case was in a horse just arrived from Baltimore, and others speedily followed. At Elyria, Ohio, it was confined for five days, and for five days only, to teams just back from Cleveland.
24:37 Tracy V. Wilson? In addition to tracing the spread like this, doctors, veterinarians, and health and sanitary officials also tried to study the disease itself, including culturing blood, urine, and mucus from infected horses, and the air and the bedding of their stables. Health officials in multiple cities did really systematic research into the animals, their illnesses, and their environments. At the same time, the nature of this disease made this tricky to do, and a lot of places, including New York, by the time health officials ordered an investigation into what was happening, the epizootic had already peaked, so the time to do that research was really limited.
25:18 Holly Frey? Multiple papers and reports published at the time looked at the question of whether the epizootic was caused by some kind of atmospheric phenomenon, or heat, or cold, or humidity, or some other condition, and concluded that it was not. It was communicable. It spread very rapidly through the eastern half of North America, where cities were bigger and more densely populated and more connected via railroads. As it moved west, the disease still spread along the transatlantic railroad, but without as many big cities or connected railroads, it slowed down. In more recent years, there have been projects to use geographic information system, or GIS mapping, to trace the spread of the
26:00 Holly Frey? epizootic along the rail lines, and those results are really dramatic.
26:06 Tracy V. Wilson? You're just watching blobs of disease move.
26:10 Holly Frey? Move.
26:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Follow the tracks.
26:11 Holly Frey? [laughing]
26:12 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh, there's not really a number for the total horse population in the entire area that was affected by this epizootic, but according to the US Census, there were more than 7 million horses in the United States in 1870, so two years before the epizootic, with the human population then more than 38 million. The epizootic's mortality rate was estimated at about 2%, although it could be as high as 10% in some places, especially if horses were kept in very overcrowded and unsanitary stables, or if they were forced to work while they were sick. So it's likely that in the United States alone, at least 140,000 horses died in this epizootic.
26:58 Holly Frey? While the rest recovered, the time they were unable to work caused some major issues in the places where they lived, and we'll talk more about that after a sponsor break.
27:14 Speaker 00 That sound, that's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.
27:42 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends
28:26 Tracy V. Wilson? proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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30:28 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1872, cities in North America were hugely reliant on horses. Steam engines had been developed in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and boats and trains were increasingly being run on steam power. The same was true of a lot of factories. It was increasingly common for factories that needed some kind of power to run off of steam engines rather than horses walking on treadmills or something similar. But the public still had some concerns about steam, specifically about the idea of steam boilers exploding in the middle of a crowded
31:07 Tracy V. Wilson? street. This was not really an unreasonable fear in the early days of steam technology. There were things that needed to work out in terms of safety. So consequently, a lot of cities banned the use of steam engines on city streets to do things like power cars and street cars. So horses were still doing a lot of that work.
31:32 Holly Frey? A lot of goods and people were being moved by train and ship, but the coal to fuel those trains and ships was being hauled by horses. The first practical automobiles were more than a decade away, as were the first practical bicycles. People traveled extensively on horseback or on horse-drawn carriages. In a lot of places, horse-drawn wagons had replaced hand carts for making deliveries and for carrying goods from the port or the train depot. Horses pulled streetcars, fire engines, ambulances, and hearse. Many of the canals of the Great Lakes region were filled with barges that were pulled by horses. In an era without effective refrigeration, a lot of people relied on daily deliveries of milk and ice,
32:17 Holly Frey? and those, too, were delivered thanks to horses.
32:20 Tracy V. Wilson? So when cities' entire populations of working horses got sick all at once, it caused major problems. In New York City, for example, the human population was about a million people, and there were about 70,000 horses. And about 14,000 of those horses worked on streetcar and stagecoach lines. 14,000 horses doing just that work. For about three weeks, starting on October 21st, the city basically came to a standstill. People and goods couldn't get where they needed to go, at least not easily. Fifty teams of oxen were brought in to try to help, but they were difficult to manage on the city streets.
33:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Teams of men were also hired to try to pull streetcars and fire engines, which was a lot harder and a lot slower than using horses.
33:13 Holly Frey? The same thing happened in other cities besides New York, including the oxen and the teams of men trying to pull streetcars. Newspaper coverage of some of this makes it sound almost a bit humorous or like people valiantly trying to make the most of a bad situation. But that wasn't the case everywhere. In some places, prisoners were being forced to try to do the work of horses.
33:37 Tracy V. Wilson? On the West Coast, Asians, especially Chinese people, were being targeted by vehement and sometimes violent racism.
33:46 Tracy V. Wilson? That's something that we have talked about on the show recently. This was just 10 years before the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. In San Francisco, Chinese people were hired to pull wagons and carry cargo in place of horses. And then they were written about in newspapers as though they were animals. A big, obnoxious irony here is that Chinese people had already been moving a lot of cargo around San Francisco without the use of horses. They were using poles or baskets hung from poles. San Francisco had passed a law banning this on public sidewalks in 1870. That was a law that didn't mention Chinese people specifically, but was intentionally written to target them.
34:31 Holly Frey? Stevedores, delivery men, and others who relied on horses were basically out of work for about three weeks when the epizootic struck their city. The few whose horses had not gotten sick or who forced their horses to work anyway often charged a premium for their services. This led to complaints of price gouging, but in some cases, it was more that these workers still needed to make ends meet. If their horse could only work for a couple hours instead of all day, that was all the time they had to earn a living.
35:04 Tracy V. Wilson? For cities where the streetcars were being pulled by horses, the few remaining streetcars became badly overcrowded, and that made them much more difficult and dangerous for those few remaining horses to pull. In New York City, Henry Berg, founder of the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, had been given police powers in cases of animal abuse. He and his deputies started patrolling the streets, inspecting working horses for signs of illness or signs of injury from pulling those overcrowded streetcars. And they forced their handlers to take the horses back to the stables if necessary.
35:44 Tracy V. Wilson? A similar scene played out in Boston with George Thorndike Angel, founder of the Massachusetts SPCA, who dispatched teams to negotiate with the streetcar drivers to let their sick horses rest.
35:57 Holly Frey? The effects of this shutdown were wide reaching. The presidential election was held on November 5th, at which point horses were sick in much of the Northeast. And there were concerns about people being able to get to the polls. Loads of vegetables and fish rotted at ports because the stevedores just couldn't move them all. Mail service to and through the western part of North America slowed to a crawl. Mail made part of the journey by rail, but from there, horses and wagons often carried it hundreds of miles to its final destination.
36:31 Tracy V. Wilson? On November 9th, 1872, a fire started in a basement in a warehouse in Boston. And as it burned, it was fueled by gas explosions. The fire department's horses were too sick to work, so teams of men tried to pull the fire engines to fight the blaze. This, of course, took a lot longer than horses would have. This was one of several factors that contributed to the spread of this fire. Others included a lack of water pressure at a lot of the fire hydrants and the way the city itself had been built. A lot of the buildings were really close together, and many had wooden mansard roofs, so the fire spread really easily between them.
37:15 Tracy V. Wilson? Eventually, gunpowder was used to collapse a number of buildings to create a fire break. This fire was not fully extinguished until November 11th. 14 people died and 776 buildings were destroyed across 65 acres of the city.
37:34 Holly Frey? In the spring of 1873, the Epizootic struck cavalry horses as the United States was at war with the Apache Nation in the Southwest and the Modoc Nation in what's now Northern California, forcing soldiers to fight on foot instead. Sources used in this episode are contradictory regarding how much the Epizootic impacted Indigenous people's horses at the same time. Written records would have come from reports from the Department of Indian Affairs, which don't mention the Epizootic's impact on Indigenous peoples at all. They may have been less affected. The disease spread extremely easily among horses that were stabled together, but many Indigenous people's horses were not stabled
38:18 Holly Frey? or were kept in individual family dwellings rather than stabled together.
38:23 Tracy V. Wilson? There's also some speculation that the Epizootic was one of the contributing factors to the panic of 1873. Other, more widely cited factors in this panic are the 1870s Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which required the government to buy silver every month at market prices regardless of how those prices fluctuated. The price of gold was also legally linked to silver prices, and so this led to financial disaster when the supply of silver dramatically increased after the opening of several new silver mines. That led the price of gold to also plummet, along with the price of silver.
39:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Other issues included railroad failures, including the failure of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. The stock market crashed in May of 1873, leading to widespread unemployment and bank failures.
39:18 Holly Frey? In addition to equines, the Great Epizootic of 1872 caused some illnesses in humans, typically humans who cared for or worked with animals. It may have also caused illnesses in some other animals, including pigs. There was an outbreak of influenza in humans in 1873 and 1874, but it's not clear whether this was connected to the equine outbreak that started in 1872.
39:47 Tracy V. Wilson? There was also a paper published in 2010 that traced a connection between the equine epizootic and a massive fatal epizootic among domesticated birds in the last months of 1872. The first such outbreak was reported in Poughkeepsie, New York on November 15th. That was 18 days after the equine flu was reported in that same city. In a number of cities, researchers found a pattern of outbreaks of avian disease that started between 20 and 30 days after the first report of horse disease. Most of them were in that 20 to 30 day range, although there were some intervals that were shorter or longer than that.
40:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Unlike in the equine outbreak, the mortality rate in this outbreak was close to 100%. This paper speculates that this could be an early example of highly pathogenic avian influenza.
40:43 Holly Frey? There's not nearly as much research into this avian epizootic as there is about the 1872 equine flu. And this may be because of differences in attitudes about birds and horses at the time, and how these animals were used and cared for. In general, flocks of chickens, ducks, and similar birds were being kept on small farms, often raised by wives and daughters. There was no National Poultry Growers Association, or other national organization, to take an interest in this yet. People also didn't typically seek veterinary care for birds like they might have for a large animal like a horse. We talked about shifts in the poultry industry in the US in our Chicken of Tomorrow episode
41:27 Holly Frey? in May of 2023.
41:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Other, more recent, research has looked at the genetic lineage of influenza viruses, and found evidence of a shift in avian flu around the time that this epizootic happened, with the equine virus closely paralleling the avian virus. Researchers who did this work did not conclude that the virus jumped from horses to birds or vice versa, but they did note that the avian and equine viruses seemed to be closely related.
41:58 Holly Frey? Equine influenza still exists today. It's endemic in most of the world's horses, with the exception of horses in Iceland and New Zealand. Vaccines were developed in the 1970s and have been refined since then. These are typically given annually, like a seasonal flu vaccine in humans, although horses that are high-risk in some way may be vaccinated every six months instead of annually. There's also more surveillance and monitoring of equine influenza today. This is handled country by country, but the World Health Organization and World Organization for Animal Health are also involved.
42:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Today, most of the world is not nearly as reliant on the labor of horses as North America was at the end of the 19th century. But major equine flu outbreaks can still cause a lot of issues and expense. In 2007, an outbreak of equine influenza virus struck Australia. This was the first known incidence of the disease there, so the horses had not been vaccinated. This was probably introduced to Australia by Japanese racehorses that had been quarantined on arrival, but the illness spread at and then beyond the quarantine site. The biggest impact with this was on racehorses, but later cost analysis showed that governments
43:19 Tracy V. Wilson? in Australia had spent $571 million eradicating the disease, including $370 million in compensation to offset the disruption to the horse industry.
43:34 Holly Frey? Not the most chipper story, but still super interesting. Do you have listener mail to go along with it?
43:40 Tracy V. Wilson? I do, kind of. Um, so we had a number of people comment on our social media in some way about whether we could post the recipe for the sugar cookies that we talked about in our nutmeg episode. That's months ago now, and I did not answer any of the comments, and they are now lost to time. So everyone get a pen and paper.
44:08 Tracy V. Wilson? Two and a half cups sifted flour. It is written that way, but in my experience, you need to measure first, then sift, not try to sift then measure with this recipe. So two and a half cups sifted flour, two teaspoons baking powder, one half teaspoon nutmeg, one half cup butter, one cup sugar, two eggs, well beaten, one teaspoon vanilla, one tablespoon cream. Great thing about this is that then you have a whole thing of cream to do whatever you want with after you've used that one tablespoon.
44:46 Holly Frey? That's just super delicious coffee.
44:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh, yeah, that's one of the things that I do after making these. Okay, so those are the ingredients now. Sift flour, baking powder, and nutmeg together twice. Cream, butter, and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, vanilla, and cream. Beat well. Add flour mixture gradually, beating after each addition until smooth. Form dough into a brick shape. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm. Roll out on a floured surface. Cut into desired shape with cookie cutter. Sprinkle with granulated or colored sugar. Place on greased baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for about seven minutes. Yields two and a half dozen cookies.
45:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh, some things from my experience making this recipe. I usually do them on parchment instead of a greased cookie sheet. Mm-hmm. Um, there is definitely a sweet spot in how firm you want the dough to be to roll it out. And this recipe can be very tricky to make in a very warm kitchen because the dough gets too soft if you just leave it on the counter between batches in the oven to roll things out. Um, and putting it in the fridge for that whole time can make it cross into the slightly too firm side. So you just gotta kind of find that sweet spot in how soft the dough is and try to like maintain it at that temperature.
46:20 Tracy V. Wilson? So that is the recipe. This is from a little booklet that my mom made about the holiday traditions in our family. Hehe. Um, and I pulled it out. I used this booklet basically for the sugar cookies recipe at this point. Um, but I pulled it out and was flipping through it before we recorded today. And it made me a little teary looking at all these things that my mom wrote up about our family traditions. So, yeah, it was very sweet. Um, so yeah, if anybody makes these sugar cookies, uh, let me know how they turned out. My mom would be totally fine with me sharing this recipe with people. She literally put it in a little booklet that she gave away.
47:05 Tracy V. Wilson? If you would like to send us the notes, we are at [email protected] . And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeart Radio app and wherever else you like to get your podcasts.
47:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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