Trichinosis revisited: Scientific interventions in the assessment of meat and animals in Imperial Germany

Abstract

This article examines the interplay of science, meat, and animals through a reappraisal of the trichinosis outbreaks during a critical period in the development of a meat inspection regime in Imperial Germany. Taking a more domestic approach than previous treatments, it questions why solutions to the problems of this parasitic disease moved from the hands of physicians, who initially called for a model of private protection carried out in the home, and into the hands of veterinarians, who established a model of public inspection centered on abattoirs. Building on previous scholarship, this article reveals how contrasting frameworks of medical and veterinary expertise shaped the debate; explains why self-protection was abandoned in favor of greater state intervention; questions why public slaughterhouses initially struggled to gain favor and then won acceptance; demonstrates why concerns about animal rather than human health were crucial in the establishment of abattoirs; and reveals why the contrasting focus on pork, on the one hand, and pigs, on the other, conditioned measures of prevention. Linking humans and animals, urban and rural society, as well as consumers and producers, this article provides a holistic and complex analysis of how German meat and animal inspection developed in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Keywords:

• health
• medicine
• pig
• pork
• self-protection
• slaughterhouse
• trichinosis
• veterinary medicine

Acknowledgments

Financial support was provided by a JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B), grant number 26770260. I would also like to record my thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism, to Peter Scholliers and Filip Degreef for going through the first draft, and to archivists at the Bundesarchiv (Lichterfelde), the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin), the Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, and the Landesarchiv Sachsen- Anhalt (Dessau).

Notes

1 Sources are not clear about the exact number of casualties. The numbers cited here— which are conservative estimates—are taken from Becker and Schmidt 51.

2 There is no comprehensive list of all trichnosis outbreaks. The following sources have been used to gauge severity: Mayer 34; Stiles and Hassall, 35–155.

3 For recent work on Imperial Germany, see Hierholzer.

4 For veterinary involvement in meat inspection more generally, see Koolmees.

5 For the importance of space and place, I am indebted to the insights of Livingston.