Viral Shutdown: The Great Epizootic of 1872
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- Опубликовано: 22 янв 2023
- Before motorized vehicles, horses were the backbone of the transportation industry. And so the Great Epizootic of 1872, a horse epidemic in North America, is history that deserves to be remembered.
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I'd like to see a short history of who does all of your opening graphics.
l surly like the green bow tie and green vest....An thanks two THG🎀 for the sick horse video🐎 👀👍
@@masterskrain2630 I use Viddyoze.
Can we get the history of "The History Guy"???? Cause the history guy deserves to be remembered. :D
Aye, I second that!
Id like to read his biography
There are far better topics.
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"...I am not an expert in horses and do not speak with assurance. I can always tell which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that my art is not above the ordinary."
- Mark Twain
My great grandfather, a Civil War veteran, bred raised and sold mules after the war. At any given time he had up to 600 mules on the family farm. I’ll have to check his diaries to see if he mentions this equine epidemic.
Let us know what you find!!
I read a memoir by a mountain guide who said one should never mistreat a mule because those animals can hold grudge for months or years and will dump a pack load off the side of a cliff or otherwise screw with you at the absolute worst possible moment where they can do the most damage.
good grief - how many acres
did y'all have ?
@@davidrice3337 My great grandfather was the largest landholder in Woodford County Kentucky when he died in 1938. He had something like 2000 acres spread in a number of farms.
@@Penekamp11 wow - my Dad started the Southern Indiana Draft Horse & Mule Assc - I love mules
these videos generally last me 3 to 4 times longer than the run time because i HAVE to pause and read every image of old newspaper articles...
The 1872 horse flu hung around and mutated. It crossed to chickens, then pigs before crossing to humans in November 1917 in Haskell County, Kansas and running wild globally in 1918 to 1921 when the first draftees arrived in Camp Funston, Kansas from Haskell County.
People who had been exposed to the 1872 influenza were generally resistant to the 1918 flu resulting in a higher mortality in the younger population.
That's cool the horsies are remembered! Amazing animals that carried us where we are today literally on their backs. They deserve more than a passing notice.
You'd have to be wearing blinders to not see horse's contributions to mankind. It certainly spurred us to explore new territories....
"My experience of horses is that they never throw away a chance to go lame, and that in all respects they are well meaning and unreliable animals. I have also observed that if you refuse a high price for a favorite horse, he will go and lay down somewhere and die."
- Mark Twain
The path of man's existence is littered with the bones of horses.
@@kellymouton7242 , the Native Americans didn't have horses until Spaniards brought them here and some of the animals escaped; originally, Native Americans used dogs as pack animals.
I'm 61 and learned a new word, today!! Thanks, History Guy!
I remember watching a seminar of epidemiologists, genome scientists trying to trace the origin of the 1918 flu & they showed its earliest links to the Epizootic flu of 1872.
I heard that too in a documentary about the so called Spanish flu which was believed to originate at Ft. Riley KS when soldiers were burning horse manure and breathed in the smoke. Two days later around a hundred soldiers became sick and two weeks later around five hundred soldiers were sick. I googled this story and it's true,
@@brianolson4376 years ago I watched a pbs doc on that flu and along the same lines but a nearby hog farm was burning carcusses after a dieoff and the smoke, ash infiltrated the base where flu cases started.
@@twoheart7813 Yeh, open burning is not a good way to destroy the carcass or the disease(s) that killed it. I believe that could happen. Bloated carcasses burning, the innards explode showering the air with infected biohazardous mist.
If you are interested in watching it agai...
ruclips.net/video/48Klc3DPdtk/видео.html
@@p1mason I just watched it . Thank you for providing the Link . Very informative and had Clues to what my Grandmother said when I was too young to understand . she was Born 1901 .
Apparently, and my favorite, the U.S. army and Apache, had to fight on foot. All their horses were sick.
The first, (and last) time I heard the word "epizootic" was from Granny Clampett on the "Beverly Hillbillies". When I looked it up, many years ago, I could find no reference to it. I assumed Granny made it up!
That's freaking hilarious. That's the only time I ever remember hearing the term epizootics. 😂😂😂 Lmao
VERY, VERY interesting. Growing up on our family farm and listening to my great-grandmother's stories of sidesaddles, Civil War vets, and young-teen couples eloping in carriages (something considered almost too scandalous to relate in the presence of an unmarried girl), I frequently heard any unknown illness jokingly called "the epizooty." I thought it was a humorous and possibly made-up word, rather like caterwampus/catawampus, until I became an adult dealing with foster dogs. I also became a museum curator, but I've NEVER heard about this epidemic before. Now I realize that this event might have been so traumatic that it was reflected in country people's language long after the original event became a footnote in history.
I never knew where the word "epizootic" came from! Probably because I'd never seen it written. I remember my grandparents (they were born before 1900 and my grandpa was in the cavalry) using that word, as in "I've got the epizootic." Thanks for this!
epi·zo·ot·ic ˌe-pə-zə-ˈwä-tik according to dictionaries online.
@K Kr my grandparents pronounced it : epi-zoo-tic, but you're right it could also be pronounced epi-zo-o-tic
@@653j521 yes, that's how I pronounce it
I’m laughed loudly on hearing the news of good treatment of horses and their deaths from shock 😂😂. Excellent work on your channel. I am an avid follower.
Sadly things haven't changed all that much. Every few weeks, sometimes even in my own state, there'll be a report of neglected horses being taken away from their owner who is arrested for mistreatment and animal neglect or cruelty. Dogs typically fare even worse. (We have two rescued dogs and are fostering another one and looking for a home for it). Anyone who would abuse animals should be kept far away from any position of government or civic responsibility.
What's so funny about that?
@@huwhitecavebeast1972 , apparently you didn't understand the sarcasm expressed in the original 1800's newspaper article .
The extreme level of sarcasm showing how the better treatment of animals would kill them from the mental shock.
@@goodun2974 absolutely, that what I meant
It's true, in Illinois the price of eggs is about $5 a dozen. I'll bet that next year the price with return to normal.
We're paying $10 for 18 eggs. This time next year probably no eggs at any price.
@@wandabanks6756Where are you, northern Alaska perhaps?
@@wandabanks6756 Pretty sure things will recover. They generally do.
It used to be that only poor people had horses and wealthy people had cars.
Now, it's the other way around.
I wish I could afford a horse.
There is an old saying, 'If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride'.
Tbf, poor people have rarely had horses. Or food.
But yes, the wealthy had horses and the rich had cars
Ok you got me with something I never heard of.
I had heard of the 1918 epidemic affecting horses, but not the 1872 outbreak. The degree to which this caused a shutdown was interesting; at this point most land transportation was animal.
The 1872 Horse Flu had virtually the same genome as the 1918 human flu but with the surface protein genes swapped out for avian flu proteins - indicating that it had crossed to chickens and then pigs.
The earliest outbreak of the 1918 flu has been traced to Haskell County, Kansas in November, 1917 among pig herders (who were drafted into the army in March 1918 at Camp Funston).
@@allangibson8494 , I'm guessing you've read John M Barry's excellent book "The Great Influenza".
@@goodun2974 No - I’m working off the Journal of Translational Medicine study.
The other confusing element at the time was the Chinese labourers transiting through the United States who were infected with pneumonic plague (a spectacularly lethal but not particularly infectious form of “Black Death”). That lead to Chinese origin rumours.
@@allangibson8494, there actually was a simmering plague epidemic in San Francisco in the late 1800's to early 1900's, which came to America from rats carried on ships conducting trade with China. The disease is now endemic in prairie dogs and other rodents.
@@goodun2974 That was an entirely separate plague outbreak that was covered up for three years by the Californian state government…
The Chinese labourers had very little contact with the outside as they transited through the US to France.
My grandfather always referred to the flu as the “epizootic”. He was born in 1890, well after this event, but I wonder if stories from this time were still being told?
it's within MY living memory that my grandparents two homesteads and dairy DIDN'T have a tractor. and after the war a lot of new arrivals from Europe didn't have a tractor until into the SIXTIES. Horses were the mainstay for everything from field work, to getting firewood, to dragging mom and dad to school in a heated sled building.
Always a pleasure to learn something new. Thanks for finding different and rarely discussed topics.
Great episode!
I only first heard about the 1872 horse flu while locked down in the early days of Covid.
I then read an article about the recent genetic study of the 1918 flu pandemic virus, which appeared to have certain genetic elements of the 1872 horse flu, tacked along with avian genes.
The main gist of the study was more about a hypothesis that most peoples' immune system response to influenza viruses is developed in response to the types of viruses they are exposed to in their first 4-6 years.
Which helps explain the high mortality rates of folks in their prime (20-40 years old) during the 1918 pandemic, while older folks did unusually better.
Every time I listen to The History Guy, I learn of an incident from the past that mirrors current events, or, I suppose, will eventually. 😬
We have a cabin in "horse country" Lexington. It's amazing horses are still around considering how fragile they are. It seems like anything and everything hurts them, including themselves running into branches and stepping on things that cause hoof infections.
This is too true! I have the equine veterinary bills to support it.
"My experience of horses is that they never throw away a chance to go lame, and that in all respects they are well meaning and unreliable animals. I have also observed that if you refuse a high price for a favorite horse, he will go and lay down somewhere and die."
- Mark Twain
Seems like the higher priced the horse, the prone it is to problems of all kinds. $100 rescue horse probably see one vet in 15 years.
@@LuvBorderCollies , same thing with dogs, purebreds being prone to genetic diseases that mixed breeds often aren't. Over the years, nearly all my dogs have been mixed-breed rescues, and the two purebreds weve had were the least healthy. (I currently have two rescued Anatolian Shepherd mixes, and they're great dogs; healthy, friendly and well behaved).
14:58🤣🤣 good one 👍
I’m really looking forward to the day that I get to use “epizootic” in a conversation.
Well, he mentioned the prices of eggs and chicken.
Wonderful. Thanks.
Loved this episode! I watched a presentation from a researcher at Arizona State who did a DNA analysis of the flu of 1918 and basically did what amounts to tracing the virus' ancestry. IIRC, his conclusion was that the roots of that flu actually started with this equine flu outbreak. I know others have mentioned similar things in the comments, but I thought others might want to search out the presentation -- it was very good and he got into considerable detail. He mentioned another horse flu outbreak during the Crimean War as well that apparently had a serious impact on the war as well.
I think I saw that also, at the start of Covid-19. It was fascinating. I would highly recommend seeking it out.
I had never heard the word epizootic until today, thank you for the educational video.
To be fair, he's pronouncing it wrong - but so did everyone in that era - having read it rather than heard it. It should be pronounced with two "o" sounds: "EP-ee-zow-OT-ic" - the 'zo" sounding like "mow" or "show" and the "otic" sounding like "antibiotic."
and then you got people buying up all the horse medicine because people want to deny science and embrace golden idols
During the plague of the horses . 🐎 The doctor would ask "Why the Long Face?"
@Aqua Fyre Good ONE Neighbor
Oh God 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@Aqua Fyre , that was a shod-dy, lame attempt at a joke. Somebody apparently left the barn door open and y'all's sense of humor escaped on the hoof!
@Aqua Fyre I'm about to sit down to a plateful 🍽 of Siebiscuits and Gravy! WAKA WAKA
@@dannyjones3840 Did you ring? 👼
I wonder has this channel ever done an episode on rinderpest? It was the scourge of cattle for a long while and I frequently bring it up to people in a certain crowd and they usually have either never heard of it or have never heard of it and insist it never happened lol
And from what I've heard, its human counterpart is measles. I could be wrong though.
Thanks for featuring animals & for the good show.
Everyone had to "pony up" a "bit" more, then they were "back in the saddle" again
Had never heard of this!!
Facinating!!👍
Thank you for the new word to add to my vocabulary!!
This certainly didn’t make the history books. Even without a pirate, it’s a good lesson.
Thanks for another cracking vlog very interesting 🎉
Those poor horses 😞 I love 🐎 horses
So, not only did I get your usual excellent dose of forgotten history, I learned a new word, which is never a bad thing! Thank you!
Epizootic - been a long time since I've heard that word. Back in the 60's that was the word Dad used instead of flu. For instance, "So and So has the epizootic". And everyone knew exactly what it meant.
Back when pigs roamed the streets of major cities and horses were the main mode of transport, dead animals were often removed by throwing them into the nearest body of water. Dead horses must have constituted a navigational hazard on the Hudson River during the epizootic.
Loved the poetry.🙂🙂
Yes! History Guy you are my history teacher. I have learned more from you than my teachers and professors! I am very grateful that you are here choosing to share your knowledge with us.
Given the way gasoline is delivered and purchased- take out the electrical grid and you've eliminated gasoline almost entirely.
I was in a Wal mart one time when the power went out.
They closed.
No way to sell goods and all refrigerated and frozen items were thrown away.
All our local stores did the same thing when Texas froze a couple of years ago.
So even when the power came back on.
They had no refrigerated or frozen items for a few days.
You have done such amazingly detailed research, sir. All the amazing, insightful artwork you found and created a video, which is an art piece in itself! Highly recommendeding and sharing on my end! I thank you very much for this upload. 🙏
I guess it really does show how all pervasive the horse was when you hear how quickly this illness spread from one city to another. I wonder how different it would be today?
today if we take one horse to a show, it comes back and whatever it brought basically runs through the barn.
@@louisliu5638 I never knew they were so fragile after all they put up with.
Well I can tell you from personal experience due to an equine influenza outbreak in NSW Australia in September 2007, it spreads as fast as the wind that carries it.
We had a horse and pony paddock agisted at the upper part of sloping ground. The area was in a semi rural area outside of Sydney, lots of horses and pony clubs. Every afternoon, there’d be a lovely breeze blowing up that hill. When the epidemic hit that breeze carried the virus with it and everywhere you’d hear horses coughing. It was hideous! Our poor beasts were infected, their noses gushed with mucus which they’d rub off on their forelegs bringing flies. And cough cough cough.
A stand in place order was issued, meaning that no equine could move from where it was at the time of the order, be it horse, pony, donkey, mule, hinny or zebra (no transporting of stock between Taronga Zoo and Western Plains Zoo), so if you had been away from where your horse usually lived, too bad, you had to board him where he was.
Medication was available, in short supply due to demand, and after one jar of the product was chugged down, when I went back to the vet for another, guess what the price had doubled!
Strict quarantine meant you had to disinfect your footwear. Care of your animals meant sponging out their nostrils and washing down their forelegs to alleviate the bothersome flies, getting the medication down their throats.
I suppose vets may have called out to some, but if your animal was a pet and not “income producing” they couldn’t care less. Too much bother with all the disinfecting of themselves and their vehicle which had to drive into the paddock with all their supplies.
I don’t know what the death toll was but our pony died. Generally, if the animal was “income producing” who cared. Other than the owner.
It’s not extortion if you are worried your livelihood might at any point drop out sick for 3 weeks
A most excellent Remembering Lance. Thank you!
"Excuse for extortion". Glad to know some things never change 🙄
Fantastic watch!
The multiple parallels to today are fascinating and instructive.
HG: Are you cataloging the events of today for the Historians of tomorrow? If so, what are you recording and how are you recording it? I would suggest the answers to this might be worthy of an episode.
Thanks!
Thank you!
😆"The nations many abused and overworked horses were bound to die of shock from this sudden outpouring of kindness."
THEN EVEN THE GARDENS SUFFERED WHITHOUT THE MUCK JUST A THOUGHT.
Wow! The closest modern equivalent would be if every gasoline engine in the country stopped working at the same time. Economic chaos.
The 1800s version of the oil crisis of the 1970s
How about a video on the Mississippi River Flood of ‘37? I remember my grandma telling me stories about it. Johnny Cash even sang about it. He was from Dyess, Arkansas about 30 miles from where I grew up.
A horse is a horse, of course, of course, a horse is a horse of course….
When you need your horse, of course, of course, missing it will hurt, of course….
The Stable Hand Poet😊
Poetry that bad needs to be shoe'd away! 😉
@@goodun2974 😆😂👍🏻
Cheers again Sir, for another 'insightful' episode. Keep going, PLEASE.
Most enlightening and informative
Very interesting. Thank you History Guy.
Great story.
According to family lore my ancestors arrived in the USA because of the horse flu. My ancestors were hired to bring a ship load of horses from England. Supposedly my ancestors, horses, and ship arrived in the new world but the ship owner seems to have "fallen" overboard at some point in the voyage. The ship and horses were sold and my ancestors took off to the frontier. I have my doubts about the story but after all don't all good stories involve pirates?
Once again, I never knew.
And I Thought I Knew a little bit about history!
That was fascinating.. Thank You.
Thank you, Lance, as I had *no idea that this ever happened* and, as you note, it has many parallels to the present day, other than our continued use of the term, horsepower. The sponsor's pitch is interesting. Sadly, I had to pass on it as it offers no free trial that I could find. I need some sense of what I'm buying before I buy it 😉
Didn't know I could give flue to my feline children. Good to know that if I should get flu to take extra precautions to protect them from it too.
On a related note, you might consider doing an episode on the "Great Horse Manure Crisis" of 1894 in New York City.
We’ll add it to the list. Thanks for the suggestion!
This episode is a reason why I love this channel.
Excellent, the impact of animal disease is often overlooked I remember reading about the rinderpest epidemic in South Africa in the 1890s which lead to famine and lead to the spread of disease due to the environmental impact of loosing almost all the cloven hoofed animals in the region
My horse Fred gets an annual flu jab, he’s better cared for than me 🤣
6:50 "all major stables"
Stables would be poorly ventilated when compared with a herd in open air.
Love your channel. I’m a veterinarian. It’s pronounced Epi-Zoh-ahtic
thanks
my father would always talk (kinda) about the great epizootic we (we were kids then I'm 67 now) always thought is was a word he made up. He finally told us the story or at least explained about "THE GREAT EPIZOOTIC" WOW I had no idea!!!! Makes me wonder about the war stories (WW2) he would tell...... HMMM
What's funny is, before covid I got into watching all these videos about the 1918 flu, and one of the interesting things is, people who got the horse flu in this 1972 epidemic, seemed to not get the 1918 flue. And I find this interesting because, in 1969 or so I got a very bad flu, my mother and I both. I don't remember much, except I think my father took the other kids and they stayed in a hotel and at one point I guess a neighbor got worried about us and made us soup - the soup had celery in it which I'd always known as a vegetable to be eaten raw, not cooked, and that was probably the most traumatic thing, to me. And I've managed to not get covid, despite being out and around people, or if I got covid it was not symptomatic. I wear a mask and everything, I'm not a dummy, but it seems that sometimes a flu you had many decades ago can help protect you.
Have you done a video on Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and 'The Worst Journey in the World'?
Thank you for ground news
Well done as always. Thanks HG
From the Evening Gazette, Port Jervis N.Y., Oct 29, 1872:
"On account of the horse disease, only one car made a trip yesterday in South Boston, and that was drawn by employees of the company. Fare 25 cents and well patronized".
The Nov 16 issue has a whole section devoted to the disease, titled Epizoo Notes. The first item is "Epizoo' reigns supreme in this village. The doctors plod around town to visit their patients, as their horses are all down with the disease". Back then, not only did doctors make house calls, but they would walk to your house if no other transportation was available. I can imagine the horse laugh if I asked my doc for that kind of service. Do doctors even own medical bags anymore? Probably not.
"Well, the doctor comes around with his face all bright/ and he says, 'in a little while you're gonna be all right'/ well all he gives is a humbug pill, a dose of dope and a great big bill/ tell me How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?....." from an old song by Blind Alfred Reed (you can find Ry Cooder's lovely version on RUclips).
Should do one on Yellowstone bus tours my grandfather started it in the early 1900s
Just as in 1872, we are still paying for the Covid outbreak of 2019-2020.
Many of us here in Tucson have backyard chickens. I have 6 wonderful hens. I haven't bought an egg for 15 years. I have a couple of "retirees" who have laid all of their eggs and now get to live with the other hens as they always have. I don't kill my hens as many do. If you do that, you kill then in their first years just as they are starting to lay consistently. All of mine have names which is a sure way to tell they will never be eaten.
Hello fellow tucsonian
Our local government doesn’t allow for backyard chickens. But a friend just a short drive down the road has a whole flock. Nothing like farm-fresh eggs!
Very interesting episode. Shows how vulnerable our economies and way of life are to epizoodics.
Mother nature can hit really hard when it wants to.Nice to remenber a noble working animal.
Steam and cable street cars did exist at the time. London, England already had steam underground railways and Chicago and New York City had steam elevated railways.
Man & beast connected who would have thought!
The graphics for this video are outstanding.
As always from The History Guy, an interesting and educationl video. Thank you.
Hope you're well and so is the family?
Is there any chance you could do sign language and see if you add a local inflection to your signing to a deaf person please 🙏. 🙏.
Wouldn't the difficulty be which sign language to use?
@@relwalretep RUclips captions make more sense.
That was a really good episode
Two problems with horses in urban settings that have been forgotten: what to do with all of the manure and dead horses. I read that New York City had an average of 6,000 horses die each day. The solution to both problems were to throw the material--manure and dead horses--into the river. The largest predator sharks and bottom feeders must have had a field day at the mouth of the rivers.
Thank you for sharing. I found this really interesting.
I appreciate you, thank you for making content.
My pleasure. Thank you for being a fan of the channel.
Wasn't there another more fatal episode of horse flu in the late 1920s? That is when farms switched from horses to tractors?
That was really interesting!
I write fanfiction and that will be one topic i will cover in it.
I'm really digging the new, crisp, audio. Love the channel and content.
Sound engineers are under appreciated
This has been an interesting presentation, as always! You make an art of telling the tales of those times!
One small correction: you mispronounced "epizootic" - but, to be fair, so did nearly everyone in that era, as most of them learned the word from print. It should be pronounced with two "o" sounds: "EP-ee-zow-OT-ic" - the 'zo" sounding like "mow" or "show" and the "otic" sounding like "antibiotic."
I have heard that the epizootic gave impetus to the use of steam engines and steam tractors and may have hastened their development. But you are right, at the time the country depended mainly on horses and mules although there were railroads and steam boats.