The "foot and mouth disease," sometimes called hoof-and-mouth
disease, is a highly infectious ailment that afflicts
cloven-hoofed livestock: cattle, pigs, sheep, goats. The name
comes from dangerous blisters that form in the animal's mouth
and on its feet. On 16 June 1904, some Dubliners are alarmed
about a possible outbreak in Ireland, which could result in an
embargo being imposed on the country's cattle—a serious
economic threat, given the fact that at the time fully half of
the land in Ireland was used for raising cattle.
Foot-and-mouth is a serious plague for farmers, and through
the years various steps have been taken to combat its spread:
quarantine, vaccination (never highly effective, since the
virus mutates rapidly), mass slaughter of affected animals,
and trade restrictions. This last concern motivates Mr. Deasy
in Nestor. He is alarmed about "our cattle
trade," a crucial piece of the Irish economy for
several centuries. "You will see at the next outbreak
they will put an embargo on Irish cattle," he tells
Stephen. The letter to the editor that he is asking Stephen to
place in two newspapers is thus a patriotic effort to ward off
a potential threat to the Irish economy by taking proactive
steps to vaccinate
animals against the disease. (The cause was shown to be viral
in 1897, but no effective vaccine had been developed by 1904.)
The author of Ulysses shared Deasy's concern. Joyce
learned of an outbreak of FMD in Ireland from his friend Henry
Blackwood Price in 1912, and incorporated the news
when he wrote Nestor five years later. Gifford
notes, however, that "The occasion of Mr. Deasy's letter is
somewhat anachronistic, since there was no outbreak of
foot-and-mouth disease in Ireland in 1904, indeed not until
1912." It is worth thinking about that Joyce, so scrupulous a
realist, cared enough about including this detail in his novel
that he was willing to accept the anachronism.
In Aeolus, we see Stephen shopping Deasy's letter
to Myles Crawford, the editor of the Evening Telegraph,
and George Russell, the editor of the Irish Homestead.
Deasy has also, he tells Stephen, sent a copy of his letter to
"Mr Field, M.P." to lay before "a meeting of the
cattletraders' association." In Cyclops
Joe Hynes reports that he has attended this meeting—he has
come to Barney Kiernan's pub to tell the Citizen about the
foot-and-mouth threat—and that Joseph Nannetti has gone to
London to take up the matter in Parliament.
The issue excites interest in several other chapters as well.
In Eumaeus Bloom comes across Mr. Deasy's letter
while reading the Evening Telegraph in the cabman's
shelter; he has had his own thoughts about foot-and-mouth
disease in Lestrygonians. In Oxen of the Sun
the men at the hospital, having heard of the letter published
in the Telegraph, talk about "Kerry cows
that are to be butchered along of the plague."
