Public seminar on global livestock disease

Organiser and director of the centre Professor Harold Cook will welcome Professor William Gervase Clarence-Smith (SOAS), an expert in the economic history of Asia and Africa.

Professor Clarence-Smith's talk 'Trypanosoma Evansi: The Global Spread of a Disease of Livestock', will examine Surra - or Trypanosoma Evansi - the worst killer disease for equids and camels in the tropics and sub-tropics, and becoming an increasingly serious problem for bovids.

"Carried by biting flies, the disease may have been presenting India for a long time, but in Southeast Asia, Surra epidemics have been described as part of a wider ecological disaster unleashed by late 19th century Western imperialism, as in Mauritius, where it nearly wiped out the island's equids within a year in 190," said Professor Clarence-Smith. "However, the disease may have been present in Southeast Asia considerably before the 1890s, and much remains to be discovered about how and when it spread."

The event will take place at 1-2pm, 210 Euston Road, NW1 2BE. It is open to the public, and no registration is required.

The second event will take place on 14 March 2007, when Professor Patrick O'Brien (London School of Economics) will discuss 'Regimes for the production of useful and reliable knowledge in China and Europe from the accession of the Ming Dynasty to the Opium War (1366-1842)'.

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UCL History of Medicine events