Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Modelling Flu: Dog Distemper and the Promise of Virus Research

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Modern Flu

Part of the book series: Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History ((MBSMH))

  • 88 Accesses

Abstract

 This chapter traces the first decade of the virus research programme at the National Institute for Medical Research. The programme was organised around two lines of research: the creation of new ‘immunological devices’ for the identification and control of human and animal virus diseases; and the development of new instruments and techniques for exploring the basic nature and properties of viruses. Both research lines were developed through the study of specific diseases for which a filterable virus was already implicated, a research animal was available, and that could be used to address major medical and public health problems. Two animal diseases—chicken sarcoma and canine distemper—were selected and through the 1920s served as proxies for studying the role of viruses in cancer and influenza respectively. Work on both diseases contributed to the emerging style of virus research at the NIMR. Whereas research on the role of cancer viruses would end in failure, research on dog distemper would win the Institute international renown and become a model for future work on influenza. Three factors were crucial to the success with dog distemper. The first was the vital role played by purpose-bred dogs and ferrets as experimental animals, which made it possible for NIMR researchers to establish a virus as the cause of canine distemper, and to develop, test, and manufacture new vaccines. The second was how the NIMR framed and approached viruses and virus diseases as complex problems that required both multidisciplinary scientific collaboration and wide-ranging partnerships with medical professionals, veterinarians, patrons, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, the medical and lay press, and public bodies. And the third as was the ability of the NIMR to readily translate distemper research into effective, widely used, and mass-produced diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Creager, Life of a Virus, 38–42.

  2. 2.

    Lawrence, Rockefeller Money, 11–23.

  3. 3.

    Creager, Life of a Virus, pp. 18–19, 30–31.

  4. 4.

    Tan von Helvoort, ‘A Bacteriological Paradigm in Influenza Research in the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 15 (1993), 3–21. For similar observations, see: Sally Smith-Hughes, The Virus: A History of a Concept (London: Heineman, 1977); A.P. Waterson and L. Wilkinson, An Introduction to the History of Virology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

  5. 5.

    Von Helvoort, ‘A Bacteriological Paradigm’, 16–17.

  6. 6.

    For an important analysis, see William Summers, ‘Inventing viruses’, Annual Review of Virology, 1 (2014), 25–35, esp. 26–27. For virology as a discipline, see Pierre-Olivier Méthot, ‘Writing the History of Virology in the Twentieth Century: Discovery, Disciplines, and Conceptual Change’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 59 (2016), 145–153.

  7. 7.

    For classic statements, see, John McFaydean, ‘The Ultravisible Viruses’, Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics, XXI (1908), 58‒68, 168‒175, 232‒242; Thomas M. Rivers, ‘Some General Aspects of Filterable Viruses’, In T.M. Rivers (Ed.), Filterable Viruses (London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cox, 1928), 3‒52. For later conceptualizations of viruses as organisms, see, P.P. Laidlaw, Virus Diseases and Viruses, The Rede Lecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938) and F. Macfarlane Burnet, Virus as Organism: Evolutionary and Ecological Aspects of Some Human Virus Diseases (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1946).

  8. 8.

    Creager, Life of a Virus, 33; Angela Creager and Jean-Paul Gaudillière, ‘Experimental Arrangements and Technologies of Visualisation: Cancer as a Viral Epidemic, 1930‒1960’, In J-P. Gaudillière and I. Löwy, (Eds.), Heredity and Infection: Historical Essays on Disease Transmission in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2001), 203‒242.

  9. 9.

    Medical Research Council, Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1928–1929 (London: HMSO, 1930), 15.

  10. 10.

    Joan Austoker A History of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, 1902–1986 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 93–98.

  11. 11.

    NA FD1/1297, ‘Virus Research’, 3 May 1922; NA FD1/1297 ‘Virus Research’, 17 June 1922.

  12. 12.

    For the social and epidemiological history of measles in Britain, see Anne Hardy, Epidemic Streets, 30–56.

  13. 13.

    L. Hektoen, ‘Experimental Measles’, Journal of Infectious Disease, 2 (1905), 238; F.G. Blake and J.D. Trask Jr., ‘Studies on Measles: I. Susceptibility of Monkeys to the Virus of Measles, Journal of Experimental Medicine, 33 (1921), 385; F.G. Blake, and J.D. Trask, J. D., Jr.: Studies on Measles: II. Symptomatology and Pathology in Monkeys Experimentally Infected, Journal of Experimental Medicine, 33 (1921), 413.

  14. 14.

    NA FD1/1297 ‘Virus Research’, 17 June 1922.

  15. 15.

    NA FD1/1297, ‘Virus Research’, 3 May 1922.

  16. 16.

    Austoker A History of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, 93–98.

  17. 17.

    Robin Wolfe Scheffler, Contagious Cause: The American Hunt for Cancer Viruses and the Rise of Molecular Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 41–60.

  18. 18.

    For the uses of chicken sarcoma in cancer virus research, see Scheffler, Contagious Cause, 41‒60; Ton van Helvoort, ‘Start of a Cancer Research Tradition; Ilana Löwy, ‘Variances in Meaning in Discovery Accounts: The Case of Contemporary Biology’, Historical Studies in the Physicial and Biological Sciences, 21 (1990), 87‒121; H-J. Rheinberger, ‘From Microsomes to Ribosomes: ‘Strategies’ of ‘Representation’’, Journal of the History of Biology, 28 (1995), 49‒89.

  19. 19.

    Creager and Gaudillière, ‘Experimental Arrangements and Technologies of Visualization: Cancer as a Viral Epidemic’, 206‒208.

  20. 20.

    P. Rous, ‘A Transmissible Avian Neoplasm (Sarcoma of the Common Fowl)’, Journal of Experimental Medicine, 12 (1910), 697‒7055; P. Rous, ‘Transmission of a malignant new growth by means of a cell-free filtrate’, Journal of the American Medical Association, 56 (1911), 198; P. Rous, and J.B. Murphy, ‘On the Causation by Filterable Agents of Three Distinct Chicken Tumours’, Journal of Experimental Medicine, 19 (1914), 52‒68. For the reception of Rous’ work see, Eva Becsei-Kilborn, ‘Scientific Discovery and Scientific Reputation: The Reception of Peyton Rous’ Discovery of the Chicken Sarcoma Virus’, Journal of the History of Biology, 43.1 (2010), 111‒157.

  21. 21.

    Austoker, A History of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, 95.

  22. 22.

    W.E. Gye, ‘The Aetiology of Malignant New Growths’, Lancet (18 July 1925), 109–117; W.E. Gye, ‘Contribution to a Discussion On: Filter-passing Viruses and Cancer’, BMJ (1 August 1925), 189–192.

  23. 23.

    J.E. Barnard, ‘The Microscopical Examination of Filterable Viruses’, Lancet (18 July 1925), 117–123.

  24. 24.

    Austoker and Bryder, ‘The National Institute for Medical Research and Related Activities of the MRC’, 42. The MRC stopped funding Gye’s cancer virus work in 1930, and in 1935 he left the NIMR to become Director of the Imperial Cancer Reserch Fund. C.H. Andrewes ‘William Ewart Gye, 1884–1952’, Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 8.22 (November 1953), 418–430, 422–425.

  25. 25.

    Anon. ‘Pioneers in Optics’, http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/timeline/people/Kohler.html.

  26. 26.

    W.J. Elford, ‘Ultraviolet Light Photography’, in R. Doerr and C. Hallauer (Eds.), Handbuch der Virusforschung (Vienna: Verlag von Julius Springer, 1938), 181–190.

  27. 27.

    My description is drawn from Barnard, ‘The Microscopical Examination of Filterable Viruses’, 117–123. Also see, Elford, ‘Ultraviolet Light Photography’, 181–190.

  28. 28.

    Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1922–1923 (London: HMSO, 1924), 37–38.

  29. 29.

    P. Collard, The Development of Microbiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 23. This work was recorded in the MRC’s Annual Reports between 1923 and 1926.

  30. 30.

    Barnard, ‘The Microscopical Examination of Filterable Viruses’; Gye, ‘The Aetiology of Malignant New Growths’.

  31. 31.

    Elford, ‘Ultraviolet Light Photography’, 187–188.

  32. 32.

    They would only start to be settled with the introduction and wider use of ultracentrifugation and electronmicroscopy. For the history of the electron microscope, see Nicolas Rasmussen, Picture Control: The Electron Microscope and the Transformation of Biology in America, 1940–1960 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).

  33. 33.

    For discussion of the general problem of filtration in virus work, see Ton van Helvoort, ‘History of Virus Research in the Twentieth Century’, 190–194.

  34. 34.

    C.H. Andrewes, ‘William Joseph Elford’, Obituary Notices of Fellows of The Royal Society, 8 (1952–1953), 149–158.

  35. 35.

    A.P. Waterson and L. Wilkinson, An Introduction to the History of Virology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 17–18.

  36. 36.

    Andrewes, ‘William Joseph Elford’, 150.

  37. 37.

    W.J. Elford, ‘A New series of Graded Collodion Membranes Suitable for General Bacteriological Use, Especially in Filterable Virus Studies’, Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, 34 (1931), 505.

  38. 38.

    W.J. Elford and J.D. Ferry, ‘The Calibration of Graded Collodion Membranes’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, XVI (1935), 1–14.

  39. 39.

    Van Helvoort has discussed the importance of virus particle size to debates over the nature of viruses in the 1920s and 1930s. Ton van Helvoort, ‘History of Virus Research in the Twentieth Century’, 190–194.

  40. 40.

    For examples of comparative medicine, see Abigail Woods, ‘Animals in the history of human and veterinary medicine’, In Hilda Kean and Philip Howell (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History (London: Routledge, 2018), 147‒170; Abigail Woods, ‘Between Human and Veterinary Medicine: The History of Animals and Surgery’, In Thomas Schlich (Ed.), Palgrave Handbook of the History of Surgery (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 115‒132; Lise Wilkinson, Animals and Disease: An Introduction to the History of Comparative Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; Anita Guerrini, Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Galen to Animal Rights (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2003); Ilana Lowy, ‘The Experimental Body’, in Roger Cooter and John Pickstone (Eds.), Companion Encyclopedia of Medicine in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2003), 435‒449.

  41. 41.

    For the role of animals in comparative medicine See Abigail Woods, ‘Animals and Disease’, In Mark Jackson (Ed.), Routledge History of Disease (London: Routledge, 2016), 147‒164; Anne Hardy, ‘Animals, Disease and Man: Making Connections’, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 46 (2003), 200‒215.

  42. 42.

    Medical Research Council, Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1921–1922 Report of the Medical Research Council (London: HMSO, 1923), 13. Italics mine.

  43. 43.

    NA FD1/1275 Fletcher to C.J. Martin, 13 October 1922.

  44. 44.

    E.M. Tansey, ‘Protection Against Dog Distemper and Dogs Protection Bills: The Medical Research Council and Anti-vivisectionist Protest, 1911–1933’, Medical History, 38 (1994), 11.

  45. 45.

    For an expanded analysis, on which this section is based, see Michael Bresalier and Michael Worboys, ‘“Saving the Lives of Our Dogs”: The development of canine distemper vaccine in interwar Britain’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 47 (2014), 305‒334.

  46. 46.

    Emma Griffin, Blood Sport: Hunting in Britain since 1066 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

  47. 47.

    J.R. Fisher, ‘Not quite a profession: the aspirations of veterinary surgeons in England in the mid- nineteenth century’, Historical Research, 66 (1993), 284–302; Abigail Woods and Stephen Matthews, ‘”Little, if at all, removed from the illiterate farrier or cow-leech”: the English veterinary surgeon, c.1860–1885, and the campaign for veterinary reform’, Medical History, 54 (2010), 29–54; Anne Hardy, ‘Professional advantage and public health: British veterinarians and State Veterinary Services, 1865–1939’, Twentieth Century British History, 14 (2003), 1–23.

  48. 48.

    Hamilton Kirk, Canine Distemper: Its Complications, Sequelae and Treatment (London: Baillière, Tindall & Cox, 1922).

  49. 49.

    On early distemper vaccines see Ian Tizard and Roland D. Schultz, ‘Grease, anthraxgate, and kennel cough: A revisionist history of early veterinary vaccines’, Advances in Veterinary Medicine, 41 (1999), 7–24.

  50. 50.

    Everett Millais, ‘The Pathogenic Microbe of Distemper in Dogs, and its Use for Protective Inoculation’, British Medical Journal, 1 (12 April 1890), 856–859.

  51. 51.

    Sidney Monckton Copeman, ‘The Micro-organism of Distemper in the Dog and the Production of a Distemper Vaccine’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 67 (1900), 459‒461.

  52. 52.

    Charles Phisalix, ‘Maladie des jeunes chiens: Statistique des vaccinations pratiquées du 15 mai au 15 août 1902’, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des sciences, 134 (1902), 1252. Lignières and Phisalix’s bacillus is discussed in Kirk Canine Distemper, 32‒33.

  53. 53.

    ‘Report of a Committee formed to carry out experiments with the vaccine of Dr. Phisalix’, Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapy, 17 (1904), 274; ‘Some Remarks on Distemper’, Veterinary Record, 18 (1906), 757.

  54. 54.

    Henri Carré, ‘Sur la maladie des jeunes chiens’, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, CXL (29 Mai 1905), 689–690.

  55. 55.

    Newell S. Ferry, ‘Etiology of Canine Distemper’, Journal of Infectious Diseases, 4 (1911), 399‒420; J.P. M’Gowan, ‘Some Observations on a Laboratory Epidemic, Principally Among Dogs and Cats, in Which the Animals Affected Presented Symptoms of the Disease called “Distemper”’, Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, 15 (1911), 372 ff.

  56. 56.

    Kirk, Canine Distemper, ix; 58–81.

  57. 57.

    NA FD1/1274, Cook to Fletcher, meeting to discuss ‘The Distemper Question’, 21 October 1922.

  58. 58.

    NA FD1/1274, Fletcher to Cook, 14 November 1922.

  59. 59.

    NA FD/1275, The Cure and Causes of Distemper, The Field Distemper Council, November 1924.

  60. 60.

    Susan D. Jones, Valuing Animals: Veterinarians and Their Patients in Modern America, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p. 132; A. Eichhorn, ‘Credit Where Credit is Due (Letter to the Editor)’, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 85 (1934), 823–824.

  61. 61.

    Medical Research Council, Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1921–1922 (London: HMSO, 1923), 85. Along with Martin and Leishman, members of the Committee included the veterinary surgeon, Frederick Hobday and the canine surgeon to the King and Kennel Club, Professor A.J. Sewell.

  62. 62.

    Frederick Hobday, ‘Saving the lives of our dogs’, The Field, 4 February 1933. All conversions have been made from the Bank of England “Inflation Converter”, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator.

  63. 63.

    Figures based on reports issued by the Field Distemper Fund, NA FD 1/1274. Report for January 1927, ‘Details of Contributions to The Field Distemper Fund to the end of 1925’, pp. 12–18; ‘Details of Contributions to The Field Distemper Fund for 1926’, pp. 18–20. ‘Details of Contributions to The Field Distemper Fund for 1927 and to the 3rd of December, 1928’, in P.P. Laidlaw and F.W. Dunkin, ‘A Report Upon the Cause and Prevention of Dog Distemper’, Progress Report of the Distemper Research Committee, the Field Distemper Fund, 1928, 19‒20.

  64. 64.

    NA FD1/1281 Letter to Lord Astor from Lord Mildmay, 1 December 1932, Field Distemper Council. Also see Hobday, ‘Saving the Lives’, p. iii. £55,000 was roughly equivalent to £4.05 million in 2020.

  65. 65.

    Thomas Dalling, ‘George William Dunkin, 1886–1942’, Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, 54 (1942), 401‒402.

  66. 66.

    Laidlaw and Dunkin, ‘A Report Upon the Cause and Prevention of Dog Distemper’, pp. 5‒6. See Robert G.W. Kirk, ‘“Wanted—Standard Guinea Pigs”: Standardization and the Experimental Animal Market in Britain ca.1919–1947’, 283–285.

  67. 67.

    Medical Research Council, Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1930–1931 (London: HMSO, 1932), 27.

  68. 68.

    ‘Field Distemper Fund’, Fletcher to Cook, 24 January 1924, NA FD1/1275.

  69. 69.

    P.P. Laidlaw and F.W. Dunkin, ‘A Report Upon the Cause and Prevention of Dog Distemper’, Progress Report of the Distemper Research Committee, the Field Distemper Fund, (1928), 19–20.

  70. 70.

    G.W. Dunkin and P.P. Laidlaw, ‘Studies in Dog-Distemper. II. Experimental Distemper in the Dog’, Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics, 39 (1926), 201‒213.

  71. 71.

    Laidlaw and Dunkin, ‘A Report Upon the Cause and Prevention of Dog Distemper’, 5.

  72. 72.

    P.P. Laidlaw and G.W. Dunkin, ‘Studies in Dog Distemper. V. The Immunisation of Dogs’, Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics, 41 (1928), 209–227.

  73. 73.

    G.W. Dunkin and P.P. Laidlaw, ‘Studies in Dog-Distemper. II. Experimental Distemper in the Dog’, Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics, 39 (1926), 213–221.

  74. 74.

    Medical Research Council, Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1924–1925 (London: HMSO, 1926); Medical Research Council, Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1925–1926 (London: HMSO, 1927).

  75. 75.

    P.P. Laidlaw, and G.W. Dunkin, ‘Studies in Dog-Distemper. III. The Nature of the Virus’, Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics, 39 (1926), 228.

  76. 76.

    E.M. Tansey, ‘Protection Against Dog Distemper and Dogs Protection Bills: the Medical Research Council and Anti-vivisectionist Protest, 1911–1933’, Medical History, 38 (1994), 12–13.

  77. 77.

    Dunkin and Laidlaw, ‘Studies in Dog-Distemper. II’, 213.

  78. 78.

    NA FD1/1275. Third Report of the Distemper Research Committee – Ferrets, 7 October 1924, On ferrets, see Arthur R. Harding, Ferret Facts and Fancies: A Book of Practical Instructions on Breeding, Raising, Handling and Selling; Also Their Uses and Fur Value (Columbus: A.R. Harding, 1919).

  79. 79.

    NA FD1/1275. Third Report of the Distemper Research Committee – Ferrets, 7 October 1924. The veterinary surgeons, Henry Gray and A.J. Sewell, who had battled over distemper in the early 1900s, also informed Laidlaw and Dunkin that they had succeeded in infecting ferrets with distemper. Dunkin and Laidlaw, ‘Studies in Dog-Distemper. I.’ pp. 201–212.

  80. 80.

    Alexander P. Thomson, ‘A History of the Ferret’, Journal of the History of Medicine, 6 (1951) 6, 471–480; C. Sweet, R.J. Fenton and G.E. Price, ‘The Ferret as an Animal Model of Influenza Virus Infection’, in Oto Zak and Merle A. Sande (Eds.), Handbook of Animal Models of Infection: Experimental Models in Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (London: Academic Press, 1999), 288–298.

  81. 81.

    Visit to Mill Hill Farm Laboratories’, Veterinary Record, 8 (1928), 1101.

  82. 82.

    Laidlaw and Dunkin, ‘A Report Upon the Cause and Prevention of Dog Distemper’, 10.

  83. 83.

    Dunkin and Laidlaw, ‘Studies in Dog-Distemper. I’, 209–210. The challenges in producing virus vaccines were widely explored in late 1920s and early 1930s, with considerable work being done at the NIMR. See, for example, S.P. Bedson, ‘Observations on the Mode of Action of a Viricidal Serum’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, 9 (1928), 235–240; C.H. Andrewes, ‘Immunity in Virus Diseases’, Lancet, 2 (1931), 1046–1049; W.W.C. Topley, An Outline of Immunity (London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1933), 254–273. The problem was also explored at Burroughs Wellcome Company; see R.A. O’Brien, ‘Certain Practical Aspects of Immunity’, British Journal of Medicine, 2 (29 November 1927), 975–978.

  84. 84.

    For example, ‘Distemper and Influenza’, The Lancet, 1 (26 February 1927), 445.

  85. 85.

    Lise Wilkinson, ‘The Development of the Virus Concept as Reflected in Corpora of Studies on Individual Pathogens. 5. Smallpox and the Evolution of Ideas on Acute (Viral) Infections’, Medical History, 23 (1979), 1–28; Wilkinson, ‘The Development of the Virus Concept as Reflected in Corpora of Studies on Individual Pathogens. 4. Rabies: Two Millennia of Ideas and Conjecture on the Aetiology of a Virus Disease’, Medical History, 21 (1977), 15–31. In interwar Britain, purifying vaccinia virus for the Government Lymph Department was crucial issue tackled by C.H. Ledingham at the Lister Institute. See Harriett Chick, Margaret Hume and Marjorie MacFarlane, War on Disease: A History of the Lister Institute (London: A. Deutsch, 1971), 133–134.

  86. 86.

    Pauline M.H. Mazumdar, ‘“In the Silence of the Laboratory”: The League of Nations Standardizes Syphilis Tests’, Social History of Medicine, 16 (2003), 437–459.

  87. 87.

    P.P. Laidlaw and G.W. Dunkin, ‘Studies in Dog Distemper. IV. The Immunisation of Ferrets Against Dog Distemper’, Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics, 41 (1927), 5.

  88. 88.

    Laidlaw and Dunkin, ‘Studies in Dog Distemper. IV’, 9–10.

  89. 89.

    Laidlaw and Dunkin, ‘Studies in Dog Distemper. IV’, 7–9.

  90. 90.

    Laidlaw and Dunkin, ‘A Report Upon the Cause and Prevention of Dog Distemper’, 11–12.

  91. 91.

    Laidlaw and Dunkin, ‘A Report Upon the Cause and Prevention of Dog Distemper’, 12; ‘Dr. Laidlaw and Mr. Dunkin on Their Distemper Investigations’, Veterinary Record, 8 (1928), 1104.

  92. 92.

    Laidlaw and Dunkin, ‘A Report Upon the Cause and Prevention of Dog Distemper’, 16–17.

  93. 93.

    For the concept of control in MRC clinical trials see Martin Edwards, Control and the Therapeutic Trial: Rhetoric and the Therapeutic Trial in Britain, 1918–1948 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007).

  94. 94.

    MRC, Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1927–1928 (London: HMSO, 1929), 106.

  95. 95.

    Ibid., 106.

  96. 96.

    ‘The Inoculation for Distemper’, Veterinary Record, 9 (1929), 123–124. Reprinted from ‘The “Field” Distemper Fund’, The Field (January 1929).

  97. 97.

    ‘The Prevention of Distemper: Discovery of an Immunity Vaccine’, Veterinary Journal, 84 (1928), 595–596.

  98. 98.

    ‘Distemper Conquered—Fruit of 5 Years’ Work’, Daily Mirror (30 November 1928), 1; Manchester Guardian (30 November 1930), 20. Also see Daily Mirror (20 October 1928), 5A and (30 October 1928), 1, including front-page photographs of Laidlaw and Dunkin; The Times (23 December 1926), 12 ff.; (25 January 1927), 9D; (29 November 1928), 9a and Editorial. 15C; Editorial (20 December 1929), 8G. The Field (30 November 1929) and (21 December 1929).

  99. 99.

    Editorial, ‘Animal Immunity’, Veterinary Journal, 8 (1928), 591.

  100. 100.

    Editorial, ‘Distemper Research’, Veterinary Record, 8 (1928), 1095.

  101. 101.

    Laidlaw and Dunkin, ‘A Report Upon the Cause and Prevention of Dog Distemper’, 11.

  102. 102.

    Ibid., 11.

  103. 103.

    NA FD1/1296 Geo. E. Pearson (deputy director, BWC) to E.S. Grew (secretary, Field Distemper Council) on monopoly, production, distribution, naming of vaccine, 11 December 1928. Also see Church and Tansey, 349–350; H.J. Parish, ‘The Wellcome Research Laboratories and Immunisation: A Historical Survey and Personal Memoir–chronologies and biographical notes, mimeograph, c.1970’, Wellcome Library Archives, WF/M/H/08/19.

  104. 104.

    ‘Success of Vaccine Treatment’, Veterinary Record, 10 (1930), 38; Lederle Laboratories, ‘The Control of Canine Distemper’, 1952, p. 4, available at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924000254262, accessed 10 May 2020.

  105. 105.

    Medical Research Council Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1930–1931 Report of the Medical Research Council (London: HMSO, 1932), 113–114.

  106. 106.

    Frederick Hobday, ‘Saving the Lives of Our Dogs’, The Field (4 February 1933), 1.

  107. 107.

    H.C. Cameron, ‘Patrick Playfair Laidlaw’, Guy’s Hospital Reports, 90 (1940–1941), 9.

  108. 108.

    Medical Research Council, Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1930‒1931 Report of the Medical Research Council (London: HMSO, 1933), 20; Daniel Gilfoyle, ‘Veterinary Immunology as Colonial Science: Method and Quantification in the Investigation of Horsesickness in South Africa, c. 1905‒1945’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 61 (2005), 26‒65.

  109. 109.

    P. Fildes P. and J.C.G. Ledingham, ‘Viruses and Virus Diseases’, in Fildes P. et al., (Eds.), A System of Bacteriology in Relation to Medicine (London: HMSO., 1930).

  110. 110.

    Medical Research Council Report… 1931–1932 (1933), 19.

  111. 111.

    Medical Research Council Report… 1926–1927 (1927), 24.

  112. 112.

    Digby, The Evolution of British General Practice, 209, 213.

  113. 113.

    W.N. Pickles, Epidemiology in Country Practice (London: The Keynes Press, 1983), 29.

  114. 114.

    Watson Davis, ‘Unsolved by Science—The ‘Flu’, The Sphere (2 March 1929), 364.

  115. 115.

    For the corporate language ‘efficiency’ in British medicine, see Sturdy and Cooter, ‘Science, Scientific Management, and the Transformation of Medicine’.

  116. 116.

    Major Greenwood, Epidemics and Crowd Diseases: An Introduction to the Study of Epidemiology (London: Williams and Norgate, 1935), 20. See also, Major Greenwood, Epidemiology, Historical and Experimental: The Herter Lectures for 1931 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, and London: Oxford University Press, 1932).

  117. 117.

    M. Greenwood, ‘The Periodicity of Influenza’, Journal of Hygiene, 29 (1929), 227‒235. For debates on the nature of epidemics, see Olga Amsterdamska, ‘Achieving Disbelief: Thought Styles, Microbial Variation, and American and British Epidemiology, 1900‒1940’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 35 (2004), 483‒507; Mendelsohn, ‘From Eradication to Equilibrium’.

  118. 118.

    ‘Secrets of the Nation’s Health: Flu’s Death Toll’, The Daily Mirror (22 October, 1928), 3.

  119. 119.

    ‘The Control of Influenza’, The Times (28 December 1928), 13.

  120. 120.

    ‘The Control of Influenza’, The Times (28 December 1928), 13.

  121. 121.

    Watson Davis, ‘Unsolved by Science—The ‘Flu’, The Sphere (2 March 1929), 116.

  122. 122.

    ‘Influenza’, The Times (13 January 1927), 13.

  123. 123.

    A. Fleming, ‘On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillum, with special Reference to Their Use in the Isolation of B. influenzae’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, X (1929), 226‒234; A. Fleming and I.H. Maclean, ‘On the Occurence of Influenza Bacilli in the Mouths of Normal People’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, XI (1930), 127‒134.

  124. 124.

    For a full survey, D. Thomson and R. Thomson, ‘Influenza (Part I)’, Annals of the Pickett-Thomson Research Laboratory, (London: Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, 1933); ‘Influenza (Part II)’, Annals of the Pickett-Thomson Research Laboratory (London: Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, 1934).

  125. 125.

    M.H. Gordon, Studies of the Viruses of Vaccinia and Variola, Medical Research Council Special report Series, 98 (London: HMSO, 1925).

  126. 126.

    L.P. Garrod, ‘Filter-passing Anaerobes in the Upper Respiratory Tract’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, IX (1928), 155–160.

  127. 127.

    Ministry of Health, ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition)’ (London: HMSO, 1927), 6.

  128. 128.

    NA MH 55 57 Issue of Ministry of Health Memorandum on Influenza, 1927, to Local Authorities Circulars 761, 955; Revised Memorandum on Influenza, 1929. Ministry of Health ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition)’, 6.

  129. 129.

    W.M. Scott, ‘The Influenza Group of Bacteria’, in P. Fildes, & J.C.G Ledingham (Eds.), A System of Bacteriology in Relation to Medicine (London: HSMO, 1929), 355.

  130. 130.

    W.W.C. Topley and G.S. Wilson, The Principles of Bacteriology and Immunity (London: Edward Arnold, 1929), 1008.

  131. 131.

    Ministry of Health ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition 1929)’, 5.

  132. 132.

    Ministry of Health, ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition 1929)’, 6.

  133. 133.

    Ministry of Health, ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition 1929)’, 12.

  134. 134.

    Ministry of Health, ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition1929)’, 13.

  135. 135.

    Ministry of Health, ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition 1929)’, 6.

  136. 136.

    Ministry of Health, ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition 1929)’, 9.

  137. 137.

    Ministry of Health, ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition 1929)’, 10.

  138. 138.

    S.H. Podolsky, Pneumonia Before Antibiotics: Therapeutic Evolution and Evaluation in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 13–21.

  139. 139.

    M. Worboys, ‘Treatments for pneumonia in Britain 1910–1940’, In Ilana Löwy and J.-P. Gaudillière (Eds.), Medicine and Change: Historical and Sociological Studies of Medical Innovation (Montrouge, France: John Libbey Eurotext, 1993), 317‒336; Martin Edwards, Control and the Therapeutic Trial, 93‒97.

  140. 140.

    Ministry of Health ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition 1929)’, 13. The 1925 Therapeutic Substances Act marked the beginning of government regulation of commercial medicine in Britain. See, Jonathan Liebenau, ‘The MRC and the Pharmaceutical Industry: The Model of Insulin’, In J. Austoker and L. Bryder (Eds.), Historical Perspectives on the Role of the MRC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 163–180.

  141. 141.

    ‘Influenza’, The Times (13 January 1927), 13.

  142. 142.

    Ministry of Health, ‘Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition 1929)’, 6.

  143. 143.

    Editor, ‘Influenza Again’, The Times (29 December 1932), 9.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Heritage, and Classics, Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Michael Bresalier

Authors
  1. Michael Bresalier
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Bresalier .

Copyright information

© 2023 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Bresalier, M. (2023). Modelling Flu: Dog Distemper and the Promise of Virus Research. In: Modern Flu. Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33954-6_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33954-6_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-33953-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-33954-6

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation