Among epidemic diseases, plague is particularly charged with historical memory and ominous cultural connotations. In many parts of the world, plague's seemingly mysterious origins, its gruesome ways of spreading, and its powers of devastation have raised it to a symbol of evil. In several languages, the word “plague” itself has become synonymous with scourge and universal disaster over the centuries. However, plague is not only a disease from the remote past; it also exemplifies the biological globalisation of modern times, highlighting at once socio-biological phenomena, global connectedness, and other dimensions of modernity. In particular, outbreaks of the so-called third plague pandemic from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century made the disease an oppressive reality in many regions of the world.
From the late nineteenth century onwards, the danger of animal diseases crossing national borders became increasingly apparent. The vast increase in the global trade in animals and animal products turned such diseases into a threat to both economic relations and public health, and called for international attention. Governments and groups of transnational experts began to develop cross-border networking strategies to counter the spread of animal diseases. Significant new developments started after the First World War with the establishment of a number of international animal health institutions, along with the Office International des Epizooties in Paris and the Veterinary Subcommittees of the League of Nations. This article traces the work of these two international animal health agencies and the interaction between their role as intergovernmental platforms and their capacity to define their own terms of reference.
A transdisciplinary project was undertaken by veterinarians and historians to investigate various aspects of potential zoonotic diseases that were classified, or have been seriously considered as reportable diseases in Switzerland (bovine spongiform encephalopathy [BSE], brucellosis, neosporosis, tuberculosis). Above all we were interested in the scientific and societal background which is necessary to declare an infectious disease being a reportable disease which needs to be eradicated. Results of this study have shown that the time interval between the first recognition of an infectious disease and the implementation of national control measures can vary greatly. In the post modern information based society, the interval between recognition of a new emerging disease and its eradication program becomes much shorter when the disease in question has a zoonotic potential. The historic correlation is not used as a history of progress. It is presented to explain the different recognition of risk and the broad context of measurements in society to fight against zoonosis.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.