{
  "id": 6767830,
  "title": "The 19th-century veterinarian who nearly cracked one of medicine’s oldest mysteries",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/11/the-19th-century-veterinarian-who-nearly-cracked-one-of-medicines",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-11T14:30:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Big Think",
    "slug": "big-think",
    "url": "https://bigthink.com/books/the-great-epizootic-1872/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "James Law, a 19th-century veterinarian, made a compelling case for germ theory in his 1872 report \"Influenza in Horses.\" Throughout the 45-page document, Law pieced together medical geography, meteorological data, and microscopy to support his findings. He meticulously described the symptoms of horse flu, dedicating a significant portion of his report to the topic.\n\nIn the \"Causes of the Influenza\" section, Law argued against miasma theory, which blamed diseases on \"bad air.\" He pointed out that factors such as soil, elevation, temperature, weather changes, and fog had no significant impact on the prevalence and mortality of the disease, regardless of location, whether in Vermont and New Hampshire or the malarial sea-coast of New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia.\n\nLaw delved into temperature data and showed that weather extremes did not play a role in the disease's spread. He presented multiple tables comparing temperature, wind velocity, barometric pressure, and precipitation, demonstrating that there were no unusual weather patterns during October 1872. He also addressed the misconception that cold weather could worsen the symptoms of infected horses, emphasizing that it was merely an aggravating factor.\n\nLaw dismissed the idea of fog as a cause, noting that the Great Epizootic was never preceded or accompanied by such phenomena. Similarly, he found no evidence to support the claim that humidity played a role in the disease's development. Instead, Law proposed the possibility of specific contagion, which he deemed a vital question with profound implications for understanding the influence of alleged causes.\n\nUltimately, Law concluded that if a specific contagion existed within infected animals, it could be transmitted to healthy stock, rendering the theories surrounding noxious gases, putrid fogs, inclemencies, extreme weather patterns, and magnetic disturbances insignificant.",
  "summary": "As far as presenting the case for germ theory, James Law’s 45-page report “Influenza in Horses,” which appeared in the Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year 1872 was a tour de force of the medical geography of the Great Epizootic. It contained detailed information on the “atmospheric conditions” that miasmists turned to over and over again, as well as a synopsis of the results of…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}