The Foot-&-Mouth Man

Foot-and-mouth disease is one of the most fiercely contagious of viral infections--for beef cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, deer, antelope and hedgehogs. But even in the midst of epizootics, when tens of thousands of animals have had to be destroyed, man has seemed almost miraculously immune, no matter how closely he may have worked with the afflicted livestock. To Bachelor Bob Brewis, who lived on his brother's farm in Yetlington, a tiny village in England's North Country, a doctor's suggestion that he might have Britain's first human case of foot-and-mouth disease was too ridiculous to take seriously.

Still, the local cattle were getting sick in increasing numbers, and Brewis did have some mild symptoms. "I felt groggy and thought I was getting the flu," he said. "When the doctor examined me, he found some blisters on my hands and in my mouth. I was banged into a hospital at Newcastle for a week, but there was nothing much the matter with me." Nor was there anything much the doctors could do. There is no effective treatment for the viral disease, but nature's own healing power soon cured Brewis.

Government experts have now confirmed the finding of foot-and-mouth disease virus in his blisters, which makes his the first proved case in Britain. And to make sure that he was not a symptomless carrier, the authorities kept him quarantined for a while--not from people but from farm animals. To Brewis, even though almost 45,000 farm animals had to be slaughtered, it is all something of a joke. Said he: "My only worry was that I might have to be destroyed too."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.