*taken from:http://www.bkf.de/index.htm
Named after a town in
Saxony, Germany, Borna Disease Virus was first described in 1766 as an
infection of horses. It is by no means confined to this town
and has caused epizootics among horses, and other animals, in Germany as
well as world wide. It was first identified in horses, then found in
sheep, donkeys, mules, llamas, alpacas, rabbits, and ostriches.
By the end of the eighteenth century, Johann von Goethe
noticed
that horse owners were afraid of the disease we now called Borna, as he
was travelling through the European countries. A German veterinary
handbook had described the disease, explaining the cause as horse sexual
frustration and overeating. The recommended treatment was bleeding the
horse, plucking hair from certain areas of the horse's body, and threading
rope coated with Spanish fly cream through the horse's subcutaneous
tissue. In the nineteenth century, Germans called it "hitzige
Kopfrankheit" (feverish head disease), or "Kopfkranheit der
Pferde" (head disease of horses).