Nary a Horse Left Standing: How a Nineteenth-Century Epidemic Transformed Medicine, Animal Welfare, and the Modern City

How a devastating outbreak of horse flu in the 1870s ground city life to a halt—but ultimately revolutionized animal rights, medicine, and transportation.

From a veteran science writer, evolutionary biologist, historian of science, and the coauthor of the acclaimed How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog).

In the 1870s, horses were the lifeblood of North American cities. New York, Boston, Chicago, and Toronto relied on tens of thousands of workhorses to power daily life. Then, in late 1872 and in...