Sickness and Power: The Great North American Epizootic Flu of 1872

项目摘要 最近爆发的COVID-19和今年冬季季节性流感的上升， 迫切地提醒人们，新出现的人畜共患病的危险是持久的，甚至是不断加剧的， 由跨越物种界限的病原体引起的疾病对人类健康构成威胁。历史学家 医学和其他学者早就认识到这类疾病塑造人类的力量。 历史然而，在流行病学史上，很少有著作关注这种复杂的关系， 继续将病原体、人类、非人类动物以及自然和人造生态系统联系起来 连接着这些不同的生物体的生命，甚至死亡。这项建议旨在 通过支持完成地理信息系统来弥补这一差距， 研究1872年大流行性流感的学术著作。这个鲜为人知的疾病事件 开始于多伦多的市场农业腹地，在那里病原体之间的不断交换， 人类，马，其他农场动物和野生水鸟为一种新的， 这是一种毒性空前的甲型流感病毒。几周之内，成群的新病毒 席卷了大都市多伦多。仅仅过了一个月，这种疾病就蔓延到了 到1873年夏天，流感已经使90%以上的人患病。 美国的马、骡子和驴，加拿大、古巴、墨西哥、土著民族、 西部和中美洲部分地区。当它达到大陆规模时， 引发了经济瘫痪，关于疾病性质和治疗的争论， 对人类使用和滥用“高贵的马”进行反省。虽然这种疾病似乎 在1873年秋季消散，最近的科学研究强烈表明，新的流感类型负责 这场大流行延续了下来并不断适应这种病毒类型的后代继续发展 感染人类的能力，也是，最明显的是在1918年至1920年的大流行， 全球流感爆发，造成至少5000万人死亡。该提案支持以下研究： 历史文献，将这些主要来源的证据整合到地理学中， 信息系统（GIS），并完成了一本学术著作，其中将大流行性流感 是疾病史上一个不为人知但意义重大的事件采用方法和调查结果 来自病毒学、进化生态学、动物行为学、环境史和其他领域， 采用跨国视角，追踪跨地区、国家和部落的疫情 边界，这本书提供了新的见解，过去，现在和未来的流感和许多 其他传染病，以新的形式-因此新的权力，危及人类 和动物健康一样--从一个物种传到另一个物种。

Project Summary The recent outbreak of COVID-19 and the upswing in seasonal influenza this winter offer pressing reminders of the enduring, even intensifying dangers that emergent zoonotic diseases— disorders caused by pathogens that jump across species divides—pose to human health. Historians of medicine and other scholars have long recognized the power of such diseases to shape human history. Yet few works in epidemiological history have attended to the complicated relationships that continue to link pathogens, humans, other-than-human animals, and the natural and built ecosystems that connect the lives—and, often, the deaths—of these disparate organisms. This proposal seeks to remedy this gap by supporting the completion of a Geographic Information System (GIS) and scholarly book examining the Great Epizootic Influenza of 1872. This little-known disease event began in Toronto’s market-farming hinterland, where the continuous exchange of pathogens between humans, horses, other farm animals, and wild waterfowl set the stage for the evolution of a new and unprecedentedly virulent form of influenza A virus. Within weeks, swarms of the new virus had engulfed metropolitan Toronto. It took just another month for the disease to spread throughout southeastern Canada and the northeastern U.S. By summer 1873, flu had sickened well over 90% of the horses, mules, and asses in the U.S., Canada, Cuba, Mexico, the Indigenous Nations of the West, and parts of Central America. As it achieved continental proportions, the Great Epizootic prompted economic paralysis, debate about the malady’s nature and treatment, and more than a little soul-searching over human use and misuse of “the noble horse.” Although the disease seemed to dissipate in fall 1873, recent scientific studies strongly suggest that the new flu type responsible for the Great Epizootic lived on and continued to adapt. Descendants of this viral type went on to develop the ability to infect human populations, too, most notably in the Great Pandemic of 1918-’20, a worldwide influenza outbreak that killed at least 50 million people. This proposal supports research in historical documents, the integration of evidence from these primary sources into a Geographic Information System (GIS), and the completion of a scholarly book that casts the Great Epizootic Flu as an unheralded but momentous event in disease history. Employing methodologies and findings from virology, evolutionary ecology, animal behavior, environmental history, and other fields, and adopting a transnational perspective that tracks this outbreak across regional, national, and tribal boundaries, this book offers fresh insights into the past, present, and future of influenza and the many other infectious diseases that don novel configurations—and hence new powers to endanger human and animal health alike—by passing from species to species.