Animal disease was central to the history of Ottoman Egypt. Animals were the historic motor force of the economy of rural Egypt as means of transport, sources of agricultural labor, and stores of wealth. A series of massive epizootics and climatic events at the end of the eighteenth century led to an enormous reduction in animal populations in Egypt. These seismic demographic shifts in the countryside led to a search for other forms of energy and labor. The most important of these new sources of power and work were humans. Agricultural tasks previously reserved for animal bodies now came to be taken over by humans as never before. The end of the eighteenth century is thus when we see the beginnings of corvée in Egypt, a fundamental reordering of landholdings in the countryside, and different conceptions of rural labor. All of this, I argue, can be traced to the results of vast numbers of animals dying in a concentrated period at the end of the eighteenth century. By showing the highly significant consequences of animal disease in Ottoman Egypt, this paper, like the panel as a whole, thus seeks to argue for the importance of an environmental and epidemiological perspective in Ottoman history.