The second disease ever to be eradicated, rinderpest could be the most devastating and notorious infection you never knew existed. Though its name means “cattle plague”, the deadly rinderpest virus infected hundreds of species of animals during its long reign, and outbreaks of rinderpest left nothing but famine and ruin in their wake. In this episode, we start by taking you through the biology of one of the biggest killers we’ve ever faced. We then trace the long history of this feared disease, from fire festival rituals in Russia to the imperialist exploitation of the Great African Panzootic of the 1890s that paved the way for European colonial rule over a large part of the continent. Fortunately, this story ends happily as only one other has done so far – with complete and total eradication. You may have started this episode not knowing about rinderpest, but when you’re done, you won’t be able to stop talking about it. Trust us.
| History | Biology |
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| Nambulli, Sham, et al. “Mapping the evolutionary trajectories of morbilliviruses: what, where and whither.” Current opinion in virology 16 (2016): 95-105. | |
| Onselen, C. van. “Reactions to rinderpest in Southern Africa, 1896-1897.” The Journal of African History 13.3 (1972): 473-88. | |
| Phoofolo, Pule. “Epidemics and revolutions: the rinderpest epidemic in late nineteenth-century Southern Africa.” Past & Present 138 (1993): 112-143. | |
| Roeder, Peter, Jeffrey Mariner, and Richard Kock. “Rinderpest: the veterinary perspective on eradication.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 368.1623 (2013): 20120139. |
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