A horse-cloth for Uganda, or how an account by a transhumant veterinary connects histories, animal diseases and continents

ABSTRACT

The picture of a ‘pony in pajamas’ is used to construct the backstory of a deadly animal disease in three parts. First, by focusing on the figure of the ‘author’ of the cloth depicted in the picture, Scottish veterinarian Robert John Stordy, one can examine the repercussions of transhumant biographical itineraries. Second, a focus on regional epizootics helps alter scales defining the local versus the global. Third, the global circulation of mules and the medicines used to cure them illustrate displacement of objects and knowledge that shaped the understanding of sickness and its remedies. Thus, the remedies and horse-clothes used in Uganda not only speak of things and beings that linked distant geographies and contexts, they also mark the multiple hubs where these connections did occur, propelled in part by commercial interests, biographical itineraries and, of course, randomness.

KEYWORDS:

• Robert John Stordy
• veterinary science
• trypanosiomasis
• animal management

Acknowledgements

This work was written under PICT 2015-3534 (FONCYT) and PIP 0153 (CONICET). It was finished thanks to a Maria E. Cassiet Fellowship, as a follow up of the Symposium ‘A Traveler’s Air’, held in May 2016 at the John Carter Brown Library. Stefanie Gänger, Isabel Martínez Navarrete, Margaret Lopes, Wolfgang Schäffner, Lewis Pyenson and William Clarence-Smith commented on earlier drafts of this paper; the mistakes, however, are mine alone.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. “Notes and News”, Veterinary Journal, 46, 1898, 462.

2. On the globalization of veterinary science, Brown and Gilfoyle, Healing the herds.

3. Pyenson, “An End to National Science.” Also the literature about “national” history and its limitations and on tropical medicine, which has received attention recently.

4. Jones and Boulton, Stordy; and Playne and Gale, East Africa, 49.

5. Lyons, Colonial Disease, 70.

6. Kean, The Great Cat and Dog Massacre.

7. Contreras and Cueto, “Caminos”; and Jacobsen, Mirages.

8. Stordy, “The breeding,” 134; and also “Animal Husbandry.”

9. See note 6.

10. Podgorny, “Charlatans.”

11. Evans, “On a Horse Disease.”

12. Chagas disease, also known as American tripanosomiasis, is transmitted by hemiptera (Triatominae). In 1902 the vectors had not yet been described. See Kropf and Sá, “The discovery of Trypanosoma cruzi”; and Zabala, “Historia de la enfermedad.”

13. Headrick, “Sleeping Sickness.”

14. Salmon and Stiles, Emergency report.

15. “La Comisión Científica al Chaco. De nuestro corresponsal. El mal de caderas. Descubrimiento de su causa por el Dr. Holmberg,” La Nación, 17 April 1885, quoted in Podgorny, “Mentiras de Perogrullo,” 17.

16. Stordy, “The Uganda Transport,” 13.

17. Bates, The Abyssinian difficulty.

18. Savile, Cyprus, 82–3; Fisher, Cyprus; and Ohnefalsch-Richter, Griechische Sitten, 156.

19. Watson, The textile manufactures, 57, remarked that the pajama was worn in India in public “by both sexes, and although its use is as yet greatly confined to the Mahomedan part of the population, the younger members of the Hindu community in the larger towns are beginning to adopt it.” Although not treated here, histories of cotton, the fabric of the pony’s pajama, could be used to explore further connections.

20. Great Britain, Report; and Varnaba, “Fighting Asses,” 498–9.

21. Stordy, “The Uganda Transport,” 15.

22. Woodman, “On sanitary science,” 173.

23. Hill, “Gentian”; Materia Medica, 575–7.

24. Hill, “Peruvian Bark;” Materia Medica, 671–3; and Modern Materia Medica; Crawford, The Andean Wonder; and Gänger, A Singular Remedy. On condurango as a panacea, I am indebted to Elisa Sevilla’s still unpublished work.

25. Markham, Peruvian Bark, III-IV, Travels; and Philip, “Imperial Science.”

26. Podgorny, “The elk,” 47.