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Summary
In Western countries during the post-World War II decades, endemic viral diseases were increasingly important to health. Such diseases have attracted limited historical attention. Due to changing methods of livestock production, they were particularly prevalent on the farm. This article uses a case study of the cattle disease, bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD), to demonstrate their historical significance. Spanning North America, the UK and Australia, it reveals the complex nature of BVD, and how and why its clinical, aetiological, epidemiological and host species identities evolved over time. This analysis sheds new light on how endemic viral diseases of livestock were experienced, understood and distributed in this period, and the influence exerted by changing agricultural practices, concerns about biological warfare and the development of virology as applied to veterinary medicine.

It is widely assumed that the development of antibiotics had a transformative effect on livestock production by making it possible to keep larger numbers of animals in smaller spaces without them succumbing to disease. Using the health and production of UK pigs, c1925-65 as a case study, this article argues that their impact has been overstated. It draws on evidence from veterinary journals, farming magazines, and government-appointed committees to demonstrate the significance of other methods of countering the diseases that emerged in association with intensive production systems. Devised by vets, farmers and other experts, these methods predated antibiotics and evolved alongside them. They were rooted in a shared understanding of pig diseases as highly complex phenomena that resulted from interactions between pig bodies and their environments. Recognition of the roles played by housing, husbandry, nutrition, and pathogens in the production of pig disease suggested multiple possible points of intervention. In situating antibiotics within this landscape of disease prevention and control, this article challenges existing claims about their reception and impact, decentres them from the history of intensive farming, and draws attention to other methods of promoting pig health, which may find renewed applications as we move towards a post-antibiotic era.

It is widely assumed that the development of antibiotics had a transformative effect on livestock production by making it possible to keep larger numbers of animals in smaller spaces without them succumbing to disease. Using the health and production of UK pigs, ca. 1925-65, as a case study, this article argues that their impact has been overstated. It draws on evidence from veterinary journals, farming magazines, and government-appointed committees to demonstrate the significance of other methods of countering the diseases that emerged in association with intensive production systems. Devised by vets, farmers and other experts, these methods predated antibiotics and evolved alongside them. They were rooted in a shared understanding of pig diseases as highly complex phenomena that resulted from interactions between pig bodies and their environments. Recognition of the roles played by housing, husbandry, nutrition, and pathogens in the production of pig disease suggested multiple possible points of intervention. In situating antibiotics within this landscape of disease prevention and control, this article challenges existing claims about their reception and impact, decentres them from the history of intensive farming, and draws attention to other methods of promoting pig health, which may find renewed applications as we move towards a post-antibiotic era.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book breaks new ground by situating animals and their diseases at the very heart of modern medicine. In demonstrating their historical significance as subjects and shapers of medicine, it offers important insights into past animal lives, and reveals that what we think of as 'human' medicine was in fact deeply zoological. Each chapter analyses an important episode in which animals changed and were changed by medicine. Ranging across the animal inhabitants of Britain's zoos, sick sheep on Scottish farms, unproductive livestock in developing countries, and the tapeworms of California and Beirut, they illuminate the multi-species dimensions of modern medicine and its rich historical connections with biology, zoology, agriculture and veterinary medicine. The modern movement for One Health – whose history is also analyzed – is therefore revealed as just the latest attempt to improve health by working across species and disciplines. This book will appeal to historians of animals, science and medicine, to those involved in the promotion and practice of One Health today.

This book breaks new ground by situating animals and their diseases at the very heart of modern medicine. In demonstrating their historical significance as subjects and shapers of medicine, it offers important insights into past animal lives, and reveals that what we think of as 'human' medicine was in fact deeply zoological. Each chapter analyses an important episode in which animals changed and were changed by medicine. Ranging across the animal inhabitants of Britain's zoos, sick sheep on Scottish farms, unproductive livestock in developing countries, and the tapeworms of California and Beirut, they illuminate the multi-species dimensions of modern medicine and its rich historical connections with biology, zoology, agriculture and veterinary medicine. The modern movement for One Health – whose history is also analyzed – is therefore revealed as just the latest attempt to improve health by working across species and disciplines. This book will appeal to historians of animals, science and medicine, to those involved in the promotion and practice of One Health today.