The Fifth Plague. Livestock Disease 

Gustave Doré made this wood engraving, “The Fifth Plague”, in 19th century France as an illustration of the Book of Exodus. It shows the devastation unleashed by the “hand of the Lord” as it decimates the livestock of Egypt. Doré worked at a time when new technologies of mass media reproduction were transforming the consumption of images. Here, his dramatic style captures the fear and helplessness of the people. We see bodies strewn across the landscape and survivors, on foot or on animals, fleeing the pestilence. The plague narrative speaks to the social order of the time, where animal husbandry underpinned the entire economy and culture. The image thus speaks not just to biblical events but to a certain social anxiety about disease and the fragility of a world dependent on animals. To fully understand the cultural impact of this image, one might delve into histories of public health, religious belief, and the technologies of printmaking that made such scenes so widely accessible.