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Anthrax in South Africa: Economics, Experiment and the Mass Vaccination of Animals, c. 1910–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2012

Daniel Gilfoyle
Daniel Gilfoyle
Affiliation:
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 45–47 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PE, UK
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During 1923, the South African government began to issue free vaccine for the immunization of cattle against anthrax. Five years later, it introduced compulsory annual vaccination in parts of the Transkeian Territories, an area reserved for occupation by Africans. Thereafter, the state sought to extend both compulsory and discretionary vaccination. In 1942, scientists at the government's Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute announced that they had issued 6 million doses of vaccine during the previous year. Approximately half the cattle in the country were being immunized annually with a special product which scientists at the Institute had recently devised. The scale of vaccination was unprecedented within the country and the annual issue of anthrax vaccine far surpassed the amount supplied for any other animal disease. It was a major state intervention in rural society. Nevertheless, vaccination against anthrax in South Africa is absent from the historiography, while published contemporary accounts are few.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Medical History , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , 01 October 2006 , pp. 465 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2006. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 M Sterne, J Nicol and M C Lambrechts, ‘The effects of large-scale active immunization against anthrax’, Journal of the South African Veterinary Medical Association (JSAVMA), 1942, 13: 53–63, pp. 53–4.

2 J Nicol, ‘Anthrax control in native reserves’, JSAVMA, 1933, 4: 46–7.

3 D R Headrick, The tools of empire: technology and European imperialism in the nineteenth century, Oxford University Press, 1981; idem, The tentacles of progress: technology transfer in the age of imperialism, 1850–1940, Oxford University Press, 1988.

4 Important texts are D Arnold (ed.), Imperial medicine and indigenous societies, Manchester University Press, 1988; R MacLeod and M Lewis (eds), Disease, medicine and empire: perspectives on western medicine and the experience of European expansion, London and New York, Routledge, 1988; M Vaughan, Curing their ills: colonial power and African illness, Stanford University Press, 1991; D Arnold, Colonising the body: state medicine and epidemic disease in nineteenth-century India, Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1993; M Harrison, Public health in British India: Anglo-Indian preventive medicine, 1859–1914, Cambridge University Press, 1994; A Cunningham and B Andrews (eds), Western medicine as contested knowledge, Manchester University Press, 1997.

5 D Arnold, ‘Smallpox and colonial medicine in nineteenth-century India’, in Arnold (ed.), Imperial medicine, op. cit., note 4 above, pp. 45–65.

6 In this regard, trypanosomosis has been a major focus. See, for example, J Ford, The role of trypanosomiases in African ecology: a study of the tsetse fly problem, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971; H Kjekshus, Ecology control and economic development in East African history: the case of Tanganyika, 1850–1950, London, Heinemann Educational, 1977; M Lyons, The colonial disease: a social history of sleeping sickness in northern Zaire, 1900–1940, Cambridge University Press, 1992; K Arden Hoppe, Lords of the fly: sleeping sickness control in British East Africa, 1900–1960, Westport, CT, Praeger, 2003.

7 See, for example, S Marks, Divided sisterhood: class, race, and gender in the nursing profession in South Africa, London, Macmillan, 1994; S Marks and N Andersson, ‘Issues in the political economy of health in Southern Africa,’ J. Southern Afr. Stud., 1987, 13 (2): 177–86; R Packard, White plague, black labour: tuberculosis and the political economy of health and disease in South Africa, Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press and James Currey, 1989; M Swanson, ‘“The sanitation syndrome”: bubonic plague and urban native policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–1909’, J. Afr. Hist., 1977, 18 (3): pp. 387–410; M Swanson, ‘The Asiatic menace: creating segregation in Durban 1870–1910’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1983, 16 (3): 401–21; E B van Heyningen, ‘Agents of empire: the medical profession in the Cape Colony, 1880–1910’, Med. Hist., 1989, 33: 450–71.

8 H Deacon, ‘Racism and medical science in South Africa's Cape Colony in the mid- to late nineteenth century,’ Osiris, 2000, 15: 190–206, p. 191.

9 Critical accounts of veterinary medicine in Africa are few. See, however, J L Giblin, ‘East Coast fever in socio-historical context: a case study from Tanzania’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1990, 23 (3): 401–21; R Waller and K Homewood, ‘Elders and experts: contesting veterinary knowledge in a pastoral community’, in Cunningham and Andrews (eds), op. cit., note 4 above, pp. 69–93.

10 W Beinart, ‘Vets, viruses and environmentalism at the Cape’, Paideuma, 1997, 43: 227–52; D Gilfoyle, ‘Veterinary science and public policy at the Cape, c. 1877–1910’, DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2002.

11 J Krikler, Revolution from above, rebellion from below: the agrarian Transvaal at the turn of the century, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 77, 80–3; S Milton, ‘To make the crooked straight: settler colonialism, imperial decline and the South African beef industry, 1902–1942’, PhD thesis, University of London, 1996, pp. 34–6. Milton also identifies a brief period during the mid-1940s when the state adopted a more positive attitude towards cattle production by Africans. S Milton, ‘The Transvaal beef frontier: environment, markets and the ideology of development, 1902–1942’, in T Griffiths and L Robin (eds), Ecology and empire: environmental history of settler societies, Edinburgh, Keele University Press, 1997, pp. 199–212, on pp. 208–9.

12 W Beinart, ‘The anatomy of a rural scare: East Griqualand in the 1890s’, in W Beinart and C Bundy, Hidden struggles in rural South Africa: politics and popular movements in the Transkei and Eastern Cape 1890–1930, London, James Currey; Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1987, pp. 46–77; C Bundy, ‘“We don't want your rain, we won't dip”: popular opposition, collaboration and social control in the anti-dipping movement, 1908–1916’, in ibid., pp. 191–221; P Phoofolo, ‘Epidemics and revolutions: the rinderpest epidemic in late nineteenth-century South Africa’, Past and Present, 1993, 138: 112–43; C van Onselen, ‘Reactions to rinderpest in southern Africa, 1896–1897’, J. Afr. Hist., 1972, 13: 473–88.

13 On the increasing importance of statistical methods for clinical trials during the twentieth century, see J R Matthews, Quantification and the quest for medical certainty, Princeton University Press, 1995. For a more general overview of the role of quantitative methods in dealing with uncertainty in problems of government, see I Hacking, ‘How should we do the history of statistics’, in G Burchell, C Gordon, and P Miller (eds), The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality with two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault, London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, pp. 181–96.

14 A M Silverstein, ‘The heuristic value of experimental systems’, J. Hist. Biol., 1994, 27: 437–47.

15 While much has been written on bacteriology, “germ theory” and the “laboratory revolution” in medical science between 1870 and 1910, coverage for the later period is much thinner. Some important texts for the earlier period are T D Brock, Robert Koch: a life in medicine and bacteriology, Madison, Science Tech Publishers, 1988; A Cunningham and P Williams (eds), The laboratory revolution in medicine, Cambridge University Press, 1992; G L Geison, The private science of Louis Pasteur, Princeton University Press, 1995; M Worboys, Spreading germs: disease theories and medical practice in Britain, 1865–1900, Cambridge University Press, 2000. The major works on the history of immunology in the twentieth century are theoretically oriented and concern debates and controversies between scientists in leading institutions. See P M H Mazumdar, Species and specificity: an interpretation of the history of immunology, Cambridge University Press, 1995; A M Silverstein, A history of immunology, San Diego, Academic Press, 1989. Some recent contributions to the history of experimental practice in immunology are W Anderson, ‘Immunities of empire: race, disease, and the new tropical medicine, 1900–1920’, Bull. Hist. Med., 1996, 70: 94–118; P M H Mazumdar, ‘“In the silence of the laboratory”: the League of Nations standardizes syphilis tests’, Soc. Hist. Med., 2003, 16: 437–59; and K Waddington, ‘To stamp out “so terrible a malady”: bovine tuberculosis and tuberculin testing in Britain, 1890–1939’, Med. Hist., 2004, 48: 29–48.

16 W Beinart, The rise of conservation in South Africa: settlers, livestock and the environment 1770–1950, Oxford University Press, 2003, especially pp. 9–17.

17 K Shillington, ‘Irrigation, agriculture and the state: the Harts Valley in historical perspective’, in W Beinart, P Delius, and S Trapido (eds), Putting a plough to the ground: accumulation and dispossession in rural South Africa, 1850–1930, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1986, pp. 311–35; Milton, ‘To make the crooked straight’, op. cit., note 11 above, p. 119.

18 Beinart, op. cit., note 10 above; Gilfoyle, op. cit., note 10 above.

19 D Gilfoyle, ‘Veterinary research and the African rinderpest epizootic: the Cape Colony, 1896–1898’, J. Southern Afr. Stud., 2003, 29 (1): 133–54.

20 S Marks and S Trapido, ‘Lord Milner and the South African state’, History Workshop, 1979, 8: 51–80.

21 Arnold Theiler was born in Frick, Switzerland and studied to be a veterinarian at Bern and Zurich. He emigrated to the South African Republic in 1893, but failed to obtain state employment as a vet until the rinderpest epizootic of 1896. For a biography, see T Gutsche, There was a man, Cape Town, Howard Timmins, 1976.

22 Krikler, op. cit., note 11 above, pp. 80–3.

23 P F Cranefield, Science and empire: East Coast fever in Rhodesia and the Transvaal, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

24 K Brown, ‘Tropical medicine and animal diseases: Onderstepoort and the development of veterinary science in South Africa, 1908–1950’, J. Southern Afr. Stud., 2005, 31 (3): 413–29. Petrus J du Toit (1888–1967) was born at Somerset Strand in the Western Cape. He studied zoology at Victoria College (later the University of Stellenbosch) and subsequently in Germany and Switzerland. He was awarded the degrees of DPhil in zoology at the University of Zurich in 1912 and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Berlin in 1916. Despite holding a British passport, he worked during the First World War at the Veterinary Hochschule, publishing a major textbook on tropical diseases of domestic animals in collaboration with Professor Paul Knuth in 1921. He returned to South Africa to take up a post at Onderstepoort in 1919 and succeeded Arnold Theiler as Director in 1928, a post which he held until his retirement in 1948. While directing research at Onderstepoort, teaching at the Veterinary Faculty of the University of Pretoria and participating in international science organizations, du Toit published many important contributions in the fields of tropical animal diseases, immunology and nutrition. D G Kingwill and B J F Schonland, ‘Petrus Johann du Toit 1888–1967,’ Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1969, vol. 15, pp. 247–66.

25 D Gilfoyle, ‘Veterinary immunology as colonial science: method and quantification in the investigation of horsesickness in South Africa, c.1905–1945’, J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 2006, 61: 26–65. The phrase is taken from D Wade Chambers and R Gillespie, ‘Locality in the history of science: colonial science, technoscience and indigenous knowledge’, Osiris, 2000, 15: 221–40.

26 Cape of Good Hope [G.8–1877], Report of the colonial veterinary surgeon on sheep and cattle diseases in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Town, Government Printer, 1877, p. 20.

27 Milton, ‘The Tranvaal beef frontier’, op. cit., note 11 above, p. 199; A Theiler and C E Gray, ‘Veterinary hygienic principles applicable to stock in South Africa’, Transvaal Agricultural Journal, 1906, 4: 771–91, p. 783.

28 Cape of Good Hope [G.41–1904], Reports of the Chief Veterinary Surgeon and the Assistant Veterinary Surgeons for the year 1903, Cape Town, Government Printer, 1904, p. 60.

29 D Kehoe, ‘Anthrax in South Africa’, in The fifth and sixth reports of the Director of Veterinary Services, April 1918, Pretoria, Government Printer, 1919, pp. 211–53, esp. p. 215.

30 In 1905, before the imposition of the East Coast regulation only 16 cases were reported in the Transkei. By 1913, the figure stood at 116, rising to 265 in 1920. Union of South Africa [U.G.47–1913], Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1st January 1912 to 31st March 1913, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1913, p. 55; Union of South Africa [U.G.13–1921], Annual report of the Department of Agriculture, 1919–1920, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1921, p. 20. P R Viljoen, H H Curson and P J J Fourie, ‘Anthrax in South Africa with reference to improved methods of protective inoculation’, in 13th and 14th reports of the Director of Veterinary Education and Research, Part I. October 1928, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1928, pp. 431–535, on pp. 447–9.

31 Union of South Africa [U.G.47–1913], Annual report of the Department of Agriculture, 1st January 1912 to 31st March 1913, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1913, p. 55; Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, pp. 215–17; Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, pp. 437–8.

32 Union of South Africa [U.G.47–1913], Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1st January 1912 to 31st March 1913, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1913, p. 55; Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 215; Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, pp. 438, 454.

33 Union of South Africa, [U.G.13–1921], Annual report of the Director of Agriculture, 1919–1920, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1921, p. 20.

34 For example, Theiler and Gray, op. cit., note 27 above, p. 784; Union of South Africa [U.G.5–1918], Annual report of the Department of Agriculture, 1916–1917, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1918, p. 32; Union of South Africa [U.G.39–1918], Annual report of the Department of Agriculture, 1917–1918, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1918, p. 40; Union of South Africa [U.G.40–1919], Annual report of the Department of Agriculture, 1918–1919, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1919, p. 36.

35 A small number of cases of anthrax were reported annually in South Africa, usually in Africans who had handled cattle hides. See correspondence in South African Nation Archives Depot (SABE) ARB 121 CF161/10/2.

36 ‘Regulations governing the certification and disinfection of hides, fleshings, hide cuttings, parings, and glue stock, sheepskins and goatskins and parts thereof, hair, wool, and other animal by-products, hay, straw, forage, or similar material offered for entry into the United States’, Board of Trade Journal, 21 Dec. 1912.

37 SABE GG 1854 54/509, Consul General, United States of America to the Governor-General of the Union of South Africa, 12 Feb. 1917.

38 SABE GG 1848 54/175, E Blackwell, Home Office to Under Secretary for State, Colonial Office, 16 Dec. 1911.

39 Great Britain, Departmental Committee on Anthrax, Report of the Departmental Committee appointed to inquire as to precautions for preventing danger of infection from anthrax in the manipulation of wool, goat hair, and camel hair. Volume 1. Report of the Disinfection Sub-committee, Cd. 9057, London, HMSO, 1918. For an account of the disinfection plant at Liverpool, see I Mortimer and J Melling, ‘“The contest between commerce and trade, on the one side, and human life on the other”: British government policies for the regulation of anthrax infection and the wool textiles industries, 1880–1939’, Textile History, 2000, 31: 222–36, pp. 227–32.

40 Australian wool producers, particularly in New South Wales, had suffered from serious problems with anthrax infection during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The vaccination of sheep was used extensively as a means of control. J Todd, Colonial technology: science and the transfer of technology in Australia, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

41 Great Britain, Departmental Committee on Anthrax, Report of the Departmental Committee appointed to inquire as to precautions for preventing danger of infection by manipulation of wool, goat hair, and camel hair. Vol. II. Report of the Committee, Cd. 9057, London HMSO, 1918.

42 Union of South Africa, Department of Agriculture, Press Circular No. 9/1919, ‘Anthrax in wool and mohair’, 5 July 1919, p. 4.

43 Union of South Africa, Department of Agriculture, Report by the Central Wool Committee dealing with the trade in wool, mohair, skins, and hides in South Africa, and recommendations to effect improvements in the present systems, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1918, pp. 1, 3.

44 Union of South Africa, Department of Agriculture, Press Circular No. 9/1919, ‘Anthrax in wool and mohair’, 5 July 1919.

45 Union of South Africa [U.G.39–1918], Annual report of Director of Agriculture for 1917–18, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1918, p. 40. For press reports in a similar vein, see Cape Times, 9 Aug. 1920, ‘Anthrax in Union—Chief Veterinary Surgeon's warning to stock owners’; Cape Argus, 9 Aug. 1920, ‘Prevalence of anthrax—a growing menace—Veterinary Officer's warning’; Journal of the Department of Agriculture, 1922, 4: 8; 1922, 5: 394–5.

46 SABE GG 1855 54/597, Lord Milner, Colonial Office to the Officer Administering the Government of the Union of South Africa, 11 Sept. 1920.

47 Great Britain, Home Office, Prevention of anthrax amongst industrial workers: memorandum on the disinfecting station established in Great Britain for disinfection of wool and hair, London,HMSO, 1921.

48 SABE GG 1856 54/655, Colonial Office to Governor-General, 18 Nov. 1922.

49 R W Dixon, ‘The anthrax problem’, Journal of the Department of Agriculture, 1923, 6: 529–38.

50 Great Britain, International Anthrax Commission, Memorandum circulated by the British Representative, London, HMSO, 1922, p. 7.

51 Mortimer and Melling, op. cit., note 39 above, p. 230.

52 P J du Toit, ‘The veterinary service of the Union of South Africa’, JSAVMA, 1928, 1: 9–28, p. 12.

53 Koch's explication of the aetiology of anthrax was the basis of his famous “postulates” for establishing a micro-organism as cause of a disease. C Kodell Carter, ‘The Koch–Pasteur dispute in establishing the cause of anthrax’, Bull. Hist. Med., 1988, 62 (1): 42–57.

54 J MacFadyean, ‘Anthrax’, J. Comp. Pathol. Ther., 1901, 14: 52–5.

55 Union of South Africa, Act No. 14, 1911.

56 Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 230.

57 Pasteur's vaccine had been available since the early 1880s. For accounts of the development and demonstration of Pasteurian vaccination, see Geison, op. cit., note 15 above, pp. 151–9; B Latour, The Pasteurization of France, Cambridge, MA, and London, Harvard University Press, 1988.

58 Worboys, op. cit., note 15 above, pp. 56–60, on p. 59.

59 J MacFadyean, ‘Anthrax’, J. Comp. Pathol. Ther., 1894, 7 (4): 325–22, and idem, ‘Anthrax’, J. Comp. Pathol. Ther., 1898, 11, 1: 51–68.

60 A Goodall, ‘Leba’, ‘The anthrax problem in Southern Africa: mode of spread of disease and practical suggestions for suppression’, thesis submitted for fellowship of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, 1921, p. 8.

61 Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, p. 450. Viljoen was one of the first Afrikaners to qualify as a vet and later served as Secretary for Agriculture.

62 Union of South Africa [U.G. 47–1913], Annual report of the Department of Agriculture, 1st January, 1912 to 31st March, 1913, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1913, p. 55.

63 Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 226.

64Agricultural Journal of the Union of South Africa, 1912, 3 (2), Supplement, p. 2; Union of South Africa [U.G.13–1921], Annual report of the Department of Agriculture, 1919–1920, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1921, p. 20; Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, pp. 213, 225, 227, 235, 238; Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, p. 450.

65 Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 225; A Smith of St Cyrus, A contribution of South African materia medica, chiefly from plants in use among the natives, Capetown and Johannesburg, Juta, 1895, pp. 55, 58. Smith lists six plants which were used as disinfectants or antidotes. Smith comments that boiling itself might have been effective in disinfecting meat.

66 Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, p. 433.

67 Goodall, op. cit., note 60 above, p. 8.

68 For descriptions of anthrax in sheep in France and Australia, see Geison, op. cit., note 15 above, pp. 145–6, Todd, op. cit., note 40 above, pp. 37–8, 66–85. In South Africa, however, one vet estimated that around two-thirds of outbreaks of anthrax in South Africa involved cattle only. Goodall, op. cit., note 60 above, p. 6; Viljoen et al., op. cit., note 30 above, p. 459.

69 Union of South Africa, Report by the Central Wool Committee, op. cit., note 43 above.

70 Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, pp. 449–50. Pasteur had demonstrated that sheep were more likely be become infected if thistles were mixed with the normal food. Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 229.

71 Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, p. 464.

72 Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 218.

73 Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, p. 455.

74 Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 230.

75 This theory was first advanced by the Cape government vet, Otto Henning in 1892 after attending outbreaks of anthrax in horses around Kimberley. M W Henning, Animal diseases in South Africa, Johannesburg, Central News Agency, 1948, p. 12. Abstract, ‘Blood-sucking insects as transmitters of anthrax’, J. Comp. Pathol. Ther., 1918, 31: 134–6. The horsefly theory was later accepted at Onderstepoort after Bacillus anthracis was isolated from hipposboscid flies. Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, p. 452.

76 SABE LDE 2760 123, Notice to Farmers 4828–10/7/14–3000.

77 P R Viljoen and H H Curson, ‘A preliminary communication regarding anthrax spore vaccine and its use in South Africa’, South African Journal of Science, 1926, 23: 551–5, p. 555.

78 Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, p. 432.

79 See, for example, Theiler and Gray, op. cit., note 27 above, p. 785; Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 231; Goodall, op. cit., note 60 above, p. 13; Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, pp. 450, 472–7; J I Quin, ‘Studies on anthrax immunity’, Annual report of the Director of Veterinary Services, Onderstepoort, 15th report, Pretoria, volume 1, October, 1929, Pretoria, Government Printer, 1929, pp. 129–82, p. 129; M Sterne and E M Robinson, ‘The preparation of anthrax spore vaccine (for cattle and sheep in South Africa)’, Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Science and Animal Industry (OJVSAI), 1939, 12: 9–21, p. 9.

80 AOVI 1/1/3, A Theiler to Secretary for Agriculture, 17 Nov. 1922.

81 Union of South Africa, Regulation no. 1256, 28 July 1923; SABE LDB 4863 Z10027/16 vol. 2, Secretary for Agriculture to M L Rouhier, Manufacturer's Agent, 9 May 1931.

82 Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, p. 476.

83Journal of the Department of Agriculture, 1932, 7 (2): 97.

84 Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, p. 432.

85 SABE LDB 4863 Z1002/16 vol. 2, Acting Director of Veterinary Services and Animal Industry to Secretary for Agriculture, Oct. 1930.

86 SABE LDB 4863 Z1002/16 vol. 1, Direkteur van Veeartsenydiens to Die Senior Veearts, 28 July 1936; SABE LDB 4863 Z1002/16 vol. 2, Director of Veterinary Services to Secretary for Agriculture, 2 July 1938.

87 SABE LDB 4863 Z1002/16 vol. 2, Senior Veterinary Surgeon, Natal to Director of Veterinary Services, 31 Jan. 1924.

88 Union of South Africa [U.G.40–1919], Annual report of the Director of Agriculture, 1918–1919, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1919, p. 37.

89 SABE BAO 5826 2/316 vol. 2, Native Commissioner, Taung, Bechuanaland, to Government Veterinary Officer, Vryburg, 16 Jan. 1930; Native Commissioner, Taung, to Secretary for Native Affairs, Cape Town, 29 March 1930; Superintendent of Natives, Barkly West, to Magistrate, Barkly West, 29 Oct. 1930; Secretary for Native Affairs to Native Commissioner, Nov. 1930.

90 Nicol, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 46.

91 Transkeian Territories General Council, Proceedings and reports of the select committees at the session of 1932, annual reports and accounts for 1931 and estimates of revenue and expenditure for 1932–1933, Umtata, 1936, p. 199.

92 In 1918, the Chief Veterinary Surgeon reported that over 41,000 cattle had been inoculated in the Transkei during the previous year. Union of South Africa [U.G.39–1918], Annual report of the Director of Agriculture, 1917–1918, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1918, p. 40; Nicol, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 46; Gilfoyle, op. cit., note 19 above; Gilfoyle, op. cit., note 10 above, pp. 306–12.

93 For an account of popular opposition to the East Coast fever regulations during the 1910s, see Bundy, op. cit. note 12 above.

94 G de Kock, C J van Heerden, R du Toit and W O Neitz, ‘Bovine theileriosis in South Africa,with special reference to Theileria mutans’, OJVSAI, 1937, 8: 9–128, pp. 9–10; A M Diesel, ‘The campaign against East Coast fever in South Africa’, OJVSAI, 1948, 23 (1 and 2): 19–31, p. 29.

95 The eleven districts were Elliotdale, Engcobo, Libode, Mqanduli, Ngqeleni, Qumbu, St Marks, Tsolo, Tsomo, Umtata, Xalanga, essentially the western part of the Transkei. Mount Currie was extensively settled by Europeans in the 1870s and remained largely in white hands. Nicol, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 47; Sterne, et al., op. cit., note 1 above, p. 54; Beinart, ‘The anatomy of a rural scare’, op. cit., note 12 above, pp. 49–51.

96 Nicol, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 55.

97 The five districts were Nongoma, Hlabisa, Mahlabatini, Nbombo and Ingwavuma. SABE BAO 5826 2/316 vol. 2, Secretary for Agriculture to Secretary for Native Affairs, 8 June 1933; Secretary for Native Affairs to Chief Native Commissioner, Pietermaritzburg, 26 June 1933.

98 SABE LBD 4863 Z1002/16 vol. 2, D Edwards, Government Veterinary Officer, Louis Trichardt to Senior Veterinary Officer, Pretoria, 20 Dec. 1935; J L Dixon, Government Veterinary Officer to Senior Veterinary Officer, Pretoria, 15 Nov. 1936; D Edwards, Government Veterinary Officer to Senior Veterinary Officer, Pretoria, 7 Dec. 1936.

99 For Vryburg, SABE BAO 5826 2/316 vol. 2, Secretary for Native Affairs to Secretary for Finance, 15 Dec. 1930; for Kuruman, Secretary for Native Affairs to Native Commissioner, Kuruman, 19 May 1931, and Senior Veterinary Officer, OFS to Director of Veterinary Services, 23 Dec. 1931; for Mafeking, Native Commissioner, Mafeking, to Secretary for Native Affairs, 10 Dec. 1932; for Barkly West, Superintendent of Locations to the Native Commissioner, 13 March 1933; for Herbert, Superintendent of Natives to Native Commissioner, Herbert, 26 April 1933.

100 SABE LBD 4863 Z1002/16 vol. 2, Memo, ‘Native areas in Transvaal, which are subject to annual anthrax inoculations’, undated, 1937.

101 Sterne, et al., op. cit., note 1 above, p. 53.

102 SABE LBD 4863 Z1002/16 vol. 2, Director of Veterinary Services to Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, 21 Nov. 1936; Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, Pretoria, to Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, Maseru, 29 Jan. 1935.

103 For a detailed account of Pasteur's methods, see Geison, op. cit., note 15 above, pp. 151–69, esp. pp. 156, 167.

104 Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, pp. 232–3, 244.

105 For an account of anthrax vaccination in Australia, see Todd, op. cit., note 40 above, pp. 46–107.

106 Archive of the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute (AOVI), box 65, file 10/5/2, C E Gray, Principal Veterinary Officer, Pretoria, to Director of Veterinary Research, 13 April 1920.

107 Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 244.

108 Viljoen and Curson, op. cit., note 77 above, p. 552.

109 Todd, op. cit., note 40 above, pp. 76–7.

110 Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, pp. 479, 526.

111 Viljoen and Curson, op. cit., note 77 above, p. 552; Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, pp. 482–7.

112 Viloen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, pp. 486–7.

113 Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 234.

114 Viljoen, et al., op. cit., note 30 above, pp. 478–9.

115 For a discussion of Theiler's work in this regard, see Gilfoyle, op. cit., note 25 above.

116 J G Bekker, ‘The relation of the virulence of attenuated anthrax strains to their immunizing value’, Annual report of the Director of Veterinary Services and Animal Industry, 15th report, volume I, October 1929, Pretoria, Government Printer, 1929, p. 183.

117 Union of South Africa [U.G.5 –1918], Annual report of the Department of Agriculture, 1916–17, Pretoria, Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1918, p. 47.

118 R M Swiderski, Anthrax: a history, Jefferson, NC, and London, McFarland, 2004, p. 155; Kehoe, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 252.

119 AOVI, box 1, file 1/1/3, A Theiler to Secretary of Forestry and Agriculture, 11 Nov. 1922; box 65, file 10/5/2, C Gray, Principal Veterinary Officer, to Director of Veterinary Research, 13 April 1920; box 65, file 10/5/2, A Theiler to R Jones, Veterinary Advisor, Siam, 18 March 1926.

120 M Sterne, E M Robinson and J Nicol, ‘The use of saponin spore vaccine for inoculation against anthrax in South Africa.’, OJVSAI, 1939, 12 (2): 279–304, p. 299. See also Swiderski, op. cit., note 118 above, p. 155.

121 Sterne and Robinson, op. cit., note 79 above, p. 11.

122 Ibid., pp. 11, 16.

123 AOVI, box 65, file 10/5/2, Senior Veterinary Officer, Natal, to Director of Veterinary Services, Pretoria, 11 Oct. 1933; R Clark, Government Veterinary Officer, Ermelo, to Director of Veterinary Services, Onderstepoort, 14 Oct. 1933; SABE LBD 4863 Z1002/16 vol. 2, K Schulz, Government Veterinary Officer, Kimberley, to Director of Veterinary Services, Pretoria, 15 Jan. 1934; SABE BAO 5862 2/316 vol. 2, Native Commissioner, Nongoma, to Native Commissioner, Pietermaritzburg, 31 April 1934 and 2 July 1934.

124 BAO 5826 2/316 vol. 2, Secretary for Forestry and Agriculture to Secretary for Native Affairs, 10 April 1934.

125 Max Sterne (1905–1997) was borne in Trieste and, at the age of four, emigrated with his parents to South Africa. He graduated from Onderstepoort veterinary faculty with the degree of Bachelor of Veterinary Science in 1928. Sterne joined the Onderstepoort laboratory in 1934 to supervise the production of anthrax vaccine. His work on variation in Bacillus anthracis was successfully submitted for a doctoral thesis and was published in full in the Onderstepoort Journal. In 1951, he moved to Britain, where he was employed by the Wellcome Research Laboratories. R D Bigalke, ‘The fourteen editors of the Journal of the South African Veterinary Medical Association’, Journal of the South African Veterinary Association, 2000, 71: 68–76.

126 Sterne and Robinson, op. cit., note 79 above, p. 11.

127 M Sterne, ‘Variation in Bacillus anthracis’, OJVSAI, 1937, 8: 271–350, p. 272. Sterne quoted a number of articles published in Europe and America in describing these phenomena.

128 Ibid., p. 280.

129 Ibid., p. 283.

130 Ibid., pp. 286–8.

131 Ibid., p. 310; J H Mason, ‘A new culture tube’, JSAVMA, 1933, 4: 89–90.

132 For the importance of Robert Koch's invention of solid media to the study of bacterial morphology and colonies, see Mazumdar, Species and specificity, op. cit., note 15 above, p. 76.

133 Mason, op. cit., note 131 above, pp. 89–90.

134 Sterne, op. cit., note 127 above, pp. 309–36.

135 According to present knowledge, the virulence of Bacillus anthracis depends on its ability to produce toxin and capsules, which are independent genetic characteristics, designated PXO1 (toxin) and PX02 (capsule). Sterne's “avirulent” strain lacked the PX02, but retained PX01, so was therefore not truly avirulent. Stern acknowledged that the vaccine could produce inflammation in horses and goats and issued a separate vaccine for them. Swiderski, op. cit., note 118 above, p. 161.

136 M Sterne, ‘The effects of different carbon dioxide concentrations of the growth of virulent anthrax strains. Pathogenicity and immunity tests on guinea-pigs and sheep with anthrax variants derived from virulent strains’, OJVSAI, 1937, 9: 66.

137 M Sterne, ‘The use of anthrax vaccines prepared from avirulent (uncapsulated) variants of Bacillus anthracis’, OJVSAI, 1939, 13: 307–12, p. 307.

138 In practice six guinea-pigs were injected with 0.01cc and another six with 0.001cc of the spore suspension (vaccine). A batch of vaccine was passed only if all the guinea-pigs which had received 0.01cc of vaccine survived an injection containing a standard dose of a virulent strain of anthrax. Typically, only some of the six which received 0.001cc survived the test. A field test was also carried out on sheep using an injection which contained four times the concentration of spores used in the standard vaccine. This was to ensure that the vaccine would not produce any unforeseen reactions. M Sterne, ‘Avirulent anthrax vaccines’, OJVSAI, 1946, 21: 41–3.

139 Sterne, op. cit., note 127 above, p. 310.

140 Sterne and Robinson, op. cit., note 79 above, p. 16.

141 Sterne, op. cit., note 127 above, p. 309.

142 Sterne, et al., op. cit., note 1 above, p. 54.

143 Ibid., p. 53.

144 Ibid., p. 56.

145 SABE BAO 5826 2/316 vol. 2, Secretary for Forestry and Agriculture to Secretary for Native Affairs, 3 Oct. 1933.

146 Sterne, et al., op cit., note 1 above, p. 61.

147 Sterne and Robinson, op. cit., note 79 above, p. 16; M Sterne, ‘The use of anthrax vaccines prepared from avirulent (unencapsulated) variants of bacillus anthracis’, OJVSAI, 1939, 13 (2): 309.

148 Union of South Africa, Government Notice No. 2699–20 Dec. 1946. The complete list was Benoni, Bethal, Boksburg, Brakpan, Bronkhorstspruit, Germiston, Groblersdal, Johannesburg, Krugersdorp, Lydenburg, Marico, Nigel, Pietersburg, Potgietersrus, Pretoria, Roodepoort, Rustenburg, Springs, Standerton, Vereeniging, Witbank and Zoutpansberg.

149 SABE LBD Z1023 vol. 2, A M Diesel, for Director of Veterinary Services to Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, 28 Oct. 1947.

150 Swiderski, op. cit., note 118 above, pp. 156–8.