Past Pandemics: Ulysses Grant and the Great Epizootic of 1872
In the latter half of 1872, the United States was in election mode. Ulysses Grant was seeking a second term in the White House, and the inconsistent and flakey Horace Greeley sought to defeat him. Early feminist Victoria Woodhull wanted to become the first female presidential candidate at a time when women lacked the vote and were still seen as subservient to their husbands. It was a time unlike today, when news travelled slowly. There was no 24 hours news cycle, and if a pandemic happened to break out at some point, there was no mechanism travelling faster than the telegraph to spread the news. In fact in the pandemic that struck North America in 1872, even the spreading of the news by means of the fastest horse presented a problem.
Ulysses Grant was a talented horseman, so the news must have been especially painful for him to receive. The pandemic of 1872 was known as the Great Epizootic of 1872. It's victims were not people, but horses. In the late 19th century, the car had not yet been invented, and the nation relied on the four-legged animals for all method of transportation, operation of machinery, and other operations important to the proper functioning of society.
The pandemic was said to have started north of the border in Canada. It was first reported a month before the election in early October 1872, when a mysterious illness swept its way through the urban horse population of Toronto. The first reports were printed in the Toronto Globe on October 5, 1872. According the reported who penned the story, "For some time past a large number of horses in the city have been affected with disease of the respiratory organs, but during the present week another disease has prevailed to an alarming extent among the horses in this district.” Horse owners and veterinarians alike were perplexed. Horses throughout the city were reported as suffering from hacking coughs and from intense fatigue that kept them from working for more than two weeks. Dr. Andrew Smith of the Ontario Veterinary College called it a “considerable loss and annoyance to owners of horses and to the community generally.”
Like the early stages of most pandemics, no one had any idea how widespread and how disruptive this disease would become. In the following months, the disease spread throughout North America. It would eventually reach the Pacific coast and into parts of Central America. It became the largest equine panzootic ever documented. At the time urban North America relied heavily on equine energy sources, and the lack of horsepower suspended transport, trade, and commerce. It made worse the infamous fire that consumed Boston in November 1872 because fire equipment was unusable without the labor of horses to deliver it to where it was needed most. It also reduced voter turnout for what would become the reelection of President Grant. As one author points out, "it even inspired bad poetry" as shown by this rhyme which was published in the Indianapolis Journal on November 22, 1872 by an author who would only identify himself by his initials D.M.J:
Not a sound was heard in the silent street,
As home from the concert we hurried;
For we found not a street car, carriage or ’bus,
And we felt considerably worried.
We hailed a driver we used to know
And hurriedly asked the reason;
He said, as he sadly shook his head,
That the horses were all a sneezin’
The cities that were hit by the Great Epizootic lacked the ability or the knowledge to prevent the rapid spread of the disease or any continental plans. In the same manner that diseases like cholera, typhoid, and smallpox had ravaged human residents of cities in the past, this form of what was believed to be equine influenza spread quickly through the dense populations of urban horses of the nineteenth century. Every city where the epizootic was detected experienced common symptoms: a sudden and thorough spread of incapacitated horses with oozing nostrils and hacking coughs. It led to suspended street railway service and local deliveries, temporary shortages of food and other supplies, price gouging, and an inability to halt the spread of the illness.
Unfortunately, conditions were ideal for the spread of the disease in the 1870s in urban centers. The cities were filled with thousands of horses kept in cramped, crowded stables. The disease was spread among horses carried on along railroads and other transportation means into new environments. Horses were the predominant mode of intraurban transportation in nineteenth-century cities. Thousands of horses were clustered in stables throughout large urban centers in North America and horses were constantly being shipped horses by rail from city to city to resupply demand. Every large city relied on horses for transportation and other labor too intense for humans.
In 1872 and 1873 the pandemic spread outward from Toronto to nearly all the major cities of Canada and the United States including Montreal, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Galveston, and San Francisco. In 1873 two veterinary and sanitary researchers reached similar conclusions about the relationship among horses, railroads, and cities as a result of geographic analysis of the epizootic. Dr. James Law, the first head of veterinary medicine from Cornell University, and Adoniram Judson, assistant sanitary inspector for the City of New York, published extensive reports on the epizootic and its causes. Both studies concluded that the disease was caused by a communicable contagion (rather than atmospheric conditions) and was carried from city to city via railroads and other means of transportation.
Then as now, the science wasn't universally accepted and anticontagionist theories remained popular in North America among some veterinary professionals and even more laypeople. Anti-contagionist explanations included atmospheric causes, localized causes such as air poisoned by the decomposition of animal and plant matter. But James Law concluded, that “the epizootic of 1872 affords but the slenderest appearance of support to any of these hypotheses. The only theory that will accord with the history of the malady and its steady increase and extension is that which recognizes the existence of a contagion, capable, like other specific disease poisons, of assimilating its appropriate food, of reproducing its elements, and of thereby increasing the area of the disease.” Law reached his conclusions based on the patterns in the geographic spread of the epizootic, and especially how the spread appeared primary along lines of transportation such as railroads. He wrote, “Not only do we find a tendency to follow the great lines of rail, but in many cases a temporary avoidance of many of the small towns on the track, whose commercial relations are less active, and their danger of infection correspondingly small."
Law’s analysis was later supported by that of Judson, which included detailed geographic research. Judson compiled a large amount of newspaper evidence and firsthand accounts from veterinary surgeons and US consular representatives from nearly all the infected towns and cities of North America. He presented his research at the first meeting of the American Public Health Association in 1873. He told his audience, “Epizoötic influenza does not spread by virtue of any of the recognized atmospheric conditions of cold, heat, humidity, season, climate, or altitude … The disease prevailed and was propagated in the cold of a northern winter, and in the summer heat of Central America; in the dry air of Minnesota, and in the moist air of the sea-board; at an altitude of 5,000 feet above the sea, at Saltillo, Mexico, and on the low levels of New Orleans and Galveston."
Everywhere the disease spread, chaos ensued among ordinary city life. The Canada Farmer estimated that within the first two days of the outbreak “at least two-thirds of the horses in the city of Toronto became affected.” Horses exhibited a series of common symptoms, including discharges from the nostrils and eyes, a hacking cough, general exhaustion, and an inability to work. Those common symptoms were repeated throughout the cities in the United States where the pandemic hit. Cabstands were deserted, Shipment of goods between cities was suspended. A banker in New York City told the New York Herald, “I found every horse I own afflicted with a husky, dry cough, and that bay Hambletonian that I drive on the lane, for which I paid $4,000 last Fall, coughing fit to break his back.”
Horse owners were also able to identify the arrival of the epizootic by its rapid incapacitation of large numbers of horses. The speed and scale of the outbreak swept through cities and skepticism concerning the presence of the epizootic soon faded. The disease typically spread until it affected all available animals. When the disease arrived in New York City in late October, it was so widespread that the New York Times claimed that “It is almost impossible to estimate the number of horses in this City now affected by the prevailing epidemic, as it has become almost universal... from the squalid shed that shelters the costermonger’s nag to the magnificent palace where the millionaire’s thoroughbreds recline at their ease, surrounded by all the luxury that wealth can purchase.” Within just a few days, Manhattan was described as a “vast horse hospital.”
Months later, the epizootic had made its way to California, where it had a rapid and uncontrollable spread among horses. The San Francisco Chronicle first recorded observations of sick horses in city stables. The paper wrote, “The epizootic prevails in all parts of the city, and there is scarcely a horse on the streets that does not seem affected with it.” Reports from Denver, New Orleans, Charleston, and many other cities all described the same symptoms and the same rapid spread among the horse population. This led to the suspension of street railway service. Equine labor powered street railway systems throughout urban North America. The epizootic was so severe in each case that it almost always shut down the streetcars. In New York City, it was reported that “Broadway and all the side parallel streets were still and empty as the ancient tombs of Egypt.”
Attempts were made to replace horse labor with other animals including oxen, mules, and even people. For example, in Chicago, vehicles were described as being "drawn by hardy humans, or the lowing ox.” A report from Rochester exclaimed: “The streets are deserted of horses, but wagons and carts drawn by men are plenty.” Cleveland also utilized teams of oxen and mules to pull its streetcars while its horses recovered.
This resulted in a late nineteenth-century energy crisis, similar to a mass power outage or sudden fuel shortage. Reports from Boston were that “The building trade is perhaps the worst off in the matter, for neither the Bay State nor the Massachusetts brick companies are able to deliver their manufactures, and the situation among the contractors is as bad as in a genuine London lock-out.” In New York City, the Tribune predicted that the epizootic would “likely prove very disastrous to commerce.” Even shipping traffic at the wharves came to a halt without horse labor. At some ports there was a backlog of shipping. Not only were goods not being delivered to these ports, but nor was the coal needed to fuel the ships.
In Richmond, Virginia, editors of the Daily State Journal reported that “The horse disease is a calamity seriously affecting the business interests of the city. It is worse. It is the excuse for extortion.” The paper claimed that carters were exploiting the epizootic by driving up prices, and similar claims were being made in other cities. In the west, stagecoach companies advertised increased prices because of the epizootic. The Indianapolis Journal warned readers of coming shortages in supplies of coal and wood. One newspaper estimated the capital value of horses in the United States at more than $660 million. By the end of October, it claimed that “The epizootic has already cost the country millions.” The situation got so bad that in December 1872, Mexico sent aid to the United States in the form of live horses.
The epizootic ultimately ran its course, lasting about 50 weeks. It would result in changes in reliance on the horse and the transition to steam power and other forms of transportation as the nation feared its return. It would be years before veterinary medicine would acquire a greater understanding of its causes, and its containment. The Great Epizootic of 1872 is a collateral subject in Arwen Bicknell's wonderful book about the trial of Lucien Ferwell entitled Justice and Vengeance: Scandal Honor and Murder in 1872 Virginia, reviewed here in this community.
Ulysses Grant was a talented horseman, so the news must have been especially painful for him to receive. The pandemic of 1872 was known as the Great Epizootic of 1872. It's victims were not people, but horses. In the late 19th century, the car had not yet been invented, and the nation relied on the four-legged animals for all method of transportation, operation of machinery, and other operations important to the proper functioning of society.
The pandemic was said to have started north of the border in Canada. It was first reported a month before the election in early October 1872, when a mysterious illness swept its way through the urban horse population of Toronto. The first reports were printed in the Toronto Globe on October 5, 1872. According the reported who penned the story, "For some time past a large number of horses in the city have been affected with disease of the respiratory organs, but during the present week another disease has prevailed to an alarming extent among the horses in this district.” Horse owners and veterinarians alike were perplexed. Horses throughout the city were reported as suffering from hacking coughs and from intense fatigue that kept them from working for more than two weeks. Dr. Andrew Smith of the Ontario Veterinary College called it a “considerable loss and annoyance to owners of horses and to the community generally.”
Like the early stages of most pandemics, no one had any idea how widespread and how disruptive this disease would become. In the following months, the disease spread throughout North America. It would eventually reach the Pacific coast and into parts of Central America. It became the largest equine panzootic ever documented. At the time urban North America relied heavily on equine energy sources, and the lack of horsepower suspended transport, trade, and commerce. It made worse the infamous fire that consumed Boston in November 1872 because fire equipment was unusable without the labor of horses to deliver it to where it was needed most. It also reduced voter turnout for what would become the reelection of President Grant. As one author points out, "it even inspired bad poetry" as shown by this rhyme which was published in the Indianapolis Journal on November 22, 1872 by an author who would only identify himself by his initials D.M.J:
Not a sound was heard in the silent street,
As home from the concert we hurried;
For we found not a street car, carriage or ’bus,
And we felt considerably worried.
We hailed a driver we used to know
And hurriedly asked the reason;
He said, as he sadly shook his head,
That the horses were all a sneezin’
The cities that were hit by the Great Epizootic lacked the ability or the knowledge to prevent the rapid spread of the disease or any continental plans. In the same manner that diseases like cholera, typhoid, and smallpox had ravaged human residents of cities in the past, this form of what was believed to be equine influenza spread quickly through the dense populations of urban horses of the nineteenth century. Every city where the epizootic was detected experienced common symptoms: a sudden and thorough spread of incapacitated horses with oozing nostrils and hacking coughs. It led to suspended street railway service and local deliveries, temporary shortages of food and other supplies, price gouging, and an inability to halt the spread of the illness.
Unfortunately, conditions were ideal for the spread of the disease in the 1870s in urban centers. The cities were filled with thousands of horses kept in cramped, crowded stables. The disease was spread among horses carried on along railroads and other transportation means into new environments. Horses were the predominant mode of intraurban transportation in nineteenth-century cities. Thousands of horses were clustered in stables throughout large urban centers in North America and horses were constantly being shipped horses by rail from city to city to resupply demand. Every large city relied on horses for transportation and other labor too intense for humans.
In 1872 and 1873 the pandemic spread outward from Toronto to nearly all the major cities of Canada and the United States including Montreal, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Galveston, and San Francisco. In 1873 two veterinary and sanitary researchers reached similar conclusions about the relationship among horses, railroads, and cities as a result of geographic analysis of the epizootic. Dr. James Law, the first head of veterinary medicine from Cornell University, and Adoniram Judson, assistant sanitary inspector for the City of New York, published extensive reports on the epizootic and its causes. Both studies concluded that the disease was caused by a communicable contagion (rather than atmospheric conditions) and was carried from city to city via railroads and other means of transportation.
Then as now, the science wasn't universally accepted and anticontagionist theories remained popular in North America among some veterinary professionals and even more laypeople. Anti-contagionist explanations included atmospheric causes, localized causes such as air poisoned by the decomposition of animal and plant matter. But James Law concluded, that “the epizootic of 1872 affords but the slenderest appearance of support to any of these hypotheses. The only theory that will accord with the history of the malady and its steady increase and extension is that which recognizes the existence of a contagion, capable, like other specific disease poisons, of assimilating its appropriate food, of reproducing its elements, and of thereby increasing the area of the disease.” Law reached his conclusions based on the patterns in the geographic spread of the epizootic, and especially how the spread appeared primary along lines of transportation such as railroads. He wrote, “Not only do we find a tendency to follow the great lines of rail, but in many cases a temporary avoidance of many of the small towns on the track, whose commercial relations are less active, and their danger of infection correspondingly small."
Law’s analysis was later supported by that of Judson, which included detailed geographic research. Judson compiled a large amount of newspaper evidence and firsthand accounts from veterinary surgeons and US consular representatives from nearly all the infected towns and cities of North America. He presented his research at the first meeting of the American Public Health Association in 1873. He told his audience, “Epizoötic influenza does not spread by virtue of any of the recognized atmospheric conditions of cold, heat, humidity, season, climate, or altitude … The disease prevailed and was propagated in the cold of a northern winter, and in the summer heat of Central America; in the dry air of Minnesota, and in the moist air of the sea-board; at an altitude of 5,000 feet above the sea, at Saltillo, Mexico, and on the low levels of New Orleans and Galveston."
Everywhere the disease spread, chaos ensued among ordinary city life. The Canada Farmer estimated that within the first two days of the outbreak “at least two-thirds of the horses in the city of Toronto became affected.” Horses exhibited a series of common symptoms, including discharges from the nostrils and eyes, a hacking cough, general exhaustion, and an inability to work. Those common symptoms were repeated throughout the cities in the United States where the pandemic hit. Cabstands were deserted, Shipment of goods between cities was suspended. A banker in New York City told the New York Herald, “I found every horse I own afflicted with a husky, dry cough, and that bay Hambletonian that I drive on the lane, for which I paid $4,000 last Fall, coughing fit to break his back.”
Horse owners were also able to identify the arrival of the epizootic by its rapid incapacitation of large numbers of horses. The speed and scale of the outbreak swept through cities and skepticism concerning the presence of the epizootic soon faded. The disease typically spread until it affected all available animals. When the disease arrived in New York City in late October, it was so widespread that the New York Times claimed that “It is almost impossible to estimate the number of horses in this City now affected by the prevailing epidemic, as it has become almost universal... from the squalid shed that shelters the costermonger’s nag to the magnificent palace where the millionaire’s thoroughbreds recline at their ease, surrounded by all the luxury that wealth can purchase.” Within just a few days, Manhattan was described as a “vast horse hospital.”
Months later, the epizootic had made its way to California, where it had a rapid and uncontrollable spread among horses. The San Francisco Chronicle first recorded observations of sick horses in city stables. The paper wrote, “The epizootic prevails in all parts of the city, and there is scarcely a horse on the streets that does not seem affected with it.” Reports from Denver, New Orleans, Charleston, and many other cities all described the same symptoms and the same rapid spread among the horse population. This led to the suspension of street railway service. Equine labor powered street railway systems throughout urban North America. The epizootic was so severe in each case that it almost always shut down the streetcars. In New York City, it was reported that “Broadway and all the side parallel streets were still and empty as the ancient tombs of Egypt.”
Attempts were made to replace horse labor with other animals including oxen, mules, and even people. For example, in Chicago, vehicles were described as being "drawn by hardy humans, or the lowing ox.” A report from Rochester exclaimed: “The streets are deserted of horses, but wagons and carts drawn by men are plenty.” Cleveland also utilized teams of oxen and mules to pull its streetcars while its horses recovered.
This resulted in a late nineteenth-century energy crisis, similar to a mass power outage or sudden fuel shortage. Reports from Boston were that “The building trade is perhaps the worst off in the matter, for neither the Bay State nor the Massachusetts brick companies are able to deliver their manufactures, and the situation among the contractors is as bad as in a genuine London lock-out.” In New York City, the Tribune predicted that the epizootic would “likely prove very disastrous to commerce.” Even shipping traffic at the wharves came to a halt without horse labor. At some ports there was a backlog of shipping. Not only were goods not being delivered to these ports, but nor was the coal needed to fuel the ships.
In Richmond, Virginia, editors of the Daily State Journal reported that “The horse disease is a calamity seriously affecting the business interests of the city. It is worse. It is the excuse for extortion.” The paper claimed that carters were exploiting the epizootic by driving up prices, and similar claims were being made in other cities. In the west, stagecoach companies advertised increased prices because of the epizootic. The Indianapolis Journal warned readers of coming shortages in supplies of coal and wood. One newspaper estimated the capital value of horses in the United States at more than $660 million. By the end of October, it claimed that “The epizootic has already cost the country millions.” The situation got so bad that in December 1872, Mexico sent aid to the United States in the form of live horses.
The epizootic ultimately ran its course, lasting about 50 weeks. It would result in changes in reliance on the horse and the transition to steam power and other forms of transportation as the nation feared its return. It would be years before veterinary medicine would acquire a greater understanding of its causes, and its containment. The Great Epizootic of 1872 is a collateral subject in Arwen Bicknell's wonderful book about the trial of Lucien Ferwell entitled Justice and Vengeance: Scandal Honor and Murder in 1872 Virginia, reviewed here in this community.