HABRI Central

The purpose of this article is to make use of the "animal viewpoint", which has been adopted by a growing number of researchers, to reconstruct the experience of Indre sheep affected by the disease from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. To this end, we rely on local archives and reinterpret them in the light of writings by veterinarians, animal scientists and ethologists. Sheep, which made up a very large livestock and played a key role in the Bas-Berry's economy, were for a long time victims of serious diseases. The gradual and uneven improvement in their health status over one and a half centuries owes much more to the progress of rearing conditions and prophylaxis than to treatments, which were still in a budding stage and depended to a large extent on sheep farmers' financial resources. In the final analysis, the study of sick animals provides us with vital insights into the understanding of the animal condition in the past.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

1. Animal behavior
2. Animal health and hygiene
3. Animals
4. Bovidae
5. Livelihoods
6. Mammals
7. peer-reviewed
8. profitability
9. prophylaxis
10. Ruminants
11. Sheep
12. sheep diseases
13. ungulates
14. vertebrates