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To Stamp Out “So Terrible a Malady”: Bovine Tuberculosis and Tuberculin Testing in Britain, 1890–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Keir Waddington
Keir Waddington
Affiliation:
School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff University, PO Box 909, Cardiff, CF10 3XU, UK
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In the early-twentieth century, moves to prevent infection from tuberculosis became an integral part of local government public health schemes. While the scale of action was dependent on individual authorities and ratepayers, interest was not limited to the pulmonary form of the disease. Effort was also directed at tackling bovine tuberculosis, which by the 1890s had become “the most important disease of cows” and, with its zoonotic properties accepted, “a substantial risk to the … consumer”. With meat and milk identified as the main vectors, moves to detect infected livestock and limit the spread of the disease became part of a wider preventive strategy. Measures were introduced to control the sale of tuberculous meat and milk. Eradication schemes were promoted, as concern merged with a growing interest in food safety and agriculture, and became caught up with debates on national efficiency, farming and child health.

Type
Articles
Information
Medical History , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , 01 January 2004 , pp. 29 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

References

1 See F B Smith, The retreat of tuberculosis 1850–1950, London, Croom Helm, 1988; Linda Bryder, Below the magic mountain: a social history of tuberculosis in twentieth-century Britain, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988.

2 William Savage, Milk and the public health, London, Macmillan, 1912, p. 125.

3 People's League of Health, Report of a special committee appointed by the People's League of Health to make a survey of tuberculosis of bovine origin in Great Britain, London, People's League of Health, 1932, pp. 1–9; H Hyslop Thomson, Tuberculosis and national health, London, Methuen, 1939, p. 109; Br. med. J., 1924, i: 347.

4 Ministry of Health, A memorandum on bovine tuberculosis in man with special reference to infection by milk, Reports on Public Health and Medical Subjects, London, 1931, p. 23; London Metropolitan Archive: ‘Non-pulmonary tuberculosis decline in London’, LCC/PH/GEN/4/239.

5 Leslie Jordan, The eradication of bovine tuberculosis, London, HMSO, 1933, p. 3.

6 Peter Koolmees, ‘Veterinary inspection and food hygiene in the twentieth century’, in David F Smith and Jim Phillips (eds), Food, science, policy and regulation in the twentieth century: international and comparative perspectives, London, Routledge, 2000, p. 61.

7 Public Record Office (PRO): Eastwood to W Fletcher, 25 April 1922, FD 1/154.

8 Harold Scurfield, ‘Use of tuberculin’, Public Health, 1899, 12: 39.

9 J F De Vine, Bovine tuberculosis, Chicago, American Veterinary Publishing, 1917, p. 31.

10 See Peter Atkins, ‘The pasteurisation of England. The science, culture and health implications of milk processing, 1900–50’, in Smith and Phillips (eds), op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 37–51; Jim Phillips and Michael French, ‘State regulation and the hazards of milk, 1900–1939’, Soc. Hist. Med., 1999, 12: 371–88.

11 See Michael Worboys, Spreading germs: disease theories and medical practice in Britain, 1865–1900, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 189, 224–8; G Feldberg, Disease and class: tuberculosis and the shaping of modern north American society, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1995, pp. 55–80.

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17 George Wooldridge (ed.), Encyclopaedia of veterinary medicine, surgery and obstetrics, 2 vols, London, H Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, 1923, vol. 1, p. 91.

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19British Congress on Tuberculosis, 1901, 4: 111.

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22The Times, 22 April 1895, p. 4.

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28Br. med. J., 1897, i: 993.

29 Harold Scurfield, ‘Suggestions with a view to the encouragement of the use of tuberculin’, Public Health, 1895/6, 8: 41; Meat Trades' Journal and Cattle Salesman's Gazette, 24 Oct. 1895, p. 510.

30 See Peter Atkins, ‘Lobbying and resistance with regard to policy on bovine tuberculosis: an inside/outside model of Britain, 1900–1939’, given at ‘From urban penalty to global emergency: current issues in the history of tuberculosis’, Social History of Medicine conference, Sheffield, March 2002.

31 Royal Commission on Tuberculosis, Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the administrative proceedings for controlling the danger to man through the use as food of the meat and milk of tuberculous animals, London, HMSO, 1898.

32The Times, 4 Nov. 1895, p. 4.

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42The Times, 15 Aug. 1898, p. 12; A H Matthews, Fifty years of agricultural politics: a history of the Central Chamber of Agriculture 1865–1915, London, P S King, 1915.

43The Times, 15 Aug. 1898, p. 11.

44 National Veterinary Association, Sixteenth general meeting, London, 1898, pp. 13–29; J McLaughlan Young, ‘Tuberculin testing’, Vet. Rec., 20 June 1896, pp. 681–3.

45 ‘The degree of prevalence of bovine tuberculosis’, Public Health, 1893/4, 6: 30.

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54Public Health, 1899, 12: 233.

55 A M Trotter, ‘Notes on two new methods of testing with tuberculin’, J. comp. Pathol. Ther., 1908, 21: 153–8; ‘The ophthalmic reaction to tuberculin’, ibid. pp. 185–7.

56 Arthur Littlejohn, ‘The combined tuberculin test for cattle’, J. comp. Pathol. Ther., 1908, 22: 217–37.

57 Jowett, op. cit., note 51 above, pp. 144–5.

58 J Watson, ‘More about tuberculin’, Vet. Rec., 31 Dec. 1898, p. 388.

59 PRO: MAF diseases of animals branch circular letter, MAF 35/1103.

60 PRO: ‘Eradication of bovine tuberculosis’, 6 Aug. 1930, MAF 35/659.

61 See Linda Bryder, ‘Tuberculosis and the MRC’, in Joan Austoker and Linda Bryder (eds), Historical perspectives of the role of the MRC, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 1–21.

62 PRO: Tuberculin committee minutes, 9 June 1923, FD 1/154.

63 PRO: W Fletcher to Treasury, 23 July 1923, T 161/213.

64 J McFadyean, ‘Experiments with tuberculin on cattle’, J. comp. Pathol. Bacteriol., 1991, 4: 29.

65 PRO: Memorandum, 30 July 1923, T 161/213.

66 PRO: W Fletcher to Eastwood, 29 April 1922, FD 1/154.

67 See Joan Austoker, ‘Walter Morley Fletcher and the origins of a basic biomedical research policy’, in Austoker and Bryder (eds), op. cit., note 61 above, pp. 23–33.

68 PRO: W Fletcher to Holland-Hibbert, 30 July 1925, FD 1/155.

69 Keith Vernon, ‘Science for the farmer? Agricultural research in England 1909–36’, Twentieth Century Br. Hist., 1997, 8: 310–33.

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73Public Health, 1933, 46: 366; Annual report of the Board of Agriculture, London, 1926.

74 Vernon, op. cit., note 69 above, pp. 329–31; Atkins, op. cit., note 10 above, pp. 42–4.

75 PRO: Memorandum, 1 March 1937, MAF 52/130.

76 J Basil Buxton and Arthur S MacNalty, The intradermal tuberculin test in cattle, London, HMSO, 1928, pp. 32, 3.

77 PRO: Tuberculin subcommittee minutes, 1 Nov. 1934, MAF 35/338.

78 Buxton and MacNalty, op. cit., note 76 above, pp. 10–11, 14.

79 R N Dixey, Tuberculin-tested milk: a study of reorganization for its production, Oxford, Agricultural Economics Research Institute, 1937, p. 98.

80 Buxton and MacNalty, op. cit., note 76 above, pp. 17–19; Hyslop Thomson, op. cit., note 3 above, p. 118.

81 PRO: Note by the tuberculin committee, June 1925, FD 1/156.

82 Buxton and MacNalty, op. cit., note 76 above; C Adeane and J Gaskell, ‘A segregation method for eliminating tuberculosis from cattle’, J. Hyg., 1927/8, 27: 250.

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84 Jordan, op. cit., note 5 above, p. 3; Alexander Fowler and Norman Wright, Reactors in tuberculin tested (licensed herds), Ayr, Hannah Dairy Research Institute, 1931.

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86 Cited in David Taylor, ‘The English dairy industry, 1860–1930: the need for reassessment’, Agric. Hist. Rev., 1974, 22: 153.

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88 PRO: Joint Tuberculosis Committee minutes, 8 Oct. 1934, FD 1/4497.

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96 PRO: Milk in schools scheme, 1934, ED 50/81.

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98J. Ministry Agric., 1934–35, 41: 1041–2.

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100Br. med. J., 1939, i: 1149.

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102 Buxton and Glover, op. cit., note 12 above, p. 1.

103 Ibid.

104 PRO: Memorandum, c.1930, MH 58/124.

105 PRO: Jackson to Beckett, 10 Oct. 1930; minute sheet, 3 Oct.1929, MH 58/124.

106 Buxton and Glover, op. cit., note 12 above, p. 15.

107 PRO: ‘Provisions applicable to tuberculins intended for testing cattle’, 1936, FD 1/4497.

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109 PRO: NFU Welsh branch, 24 Jan. 1938, MH 55/1219.

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118 Jonathan Brown, Agriculture in England, Manchester University Press, 1987, pp. 92–3.

119 PRO: Advisory committee on TT milk minutes, 16 Sept. 1938, JV 3/35.

120 PRO: Midland counties dairy to NFU, 13 Sept. 1937, JV 7/645.

121 PRO: Representations of the milk marketing board, 29 Sept. 1938, MAF 34/762; PRO: Joint Tuberculosis Committee minutes, 5 Nov. 1937, FD 1/4497.

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124 Dixey, op. cit., note 79 above, pp. 89, 99.

125 Norman Barron, The dairy farmer's veterinary book, Ipswich, Dairy Farmer (books), 1950, p. 112.

126 MAFF memorandum, ‘Inquiry into badgers and bovine tuberculosis’, section V, March 2000.

127 Atkins, op. cit., note 10 above, pp. 37–51; Phillips and French, op. cit., note 10 above, pp. 371–88.

128 PRO: Memorandum, 14 Aug. 1931, MAF 35/659.

129 E R Hiscox and Ursula Starling, ‘The use of the fermentation-reductase test for the grading of milk, J. Hyg., 1925, 24: 164–8.