A woman believes she may have contracted foot and mouth disease during an archaeological dig at a medieval rubbish tip.

Dr Sally White, curator of Worthing Museum, said her symptoms were identical to those being described by public health experts.

Health experts are currently testing three people involved with the culling of livestock after they showed symptoms of the disease.

Dr White suffered severe blistering to her feet, hands and the inside of her mouth after excavating a medieval midden in 1974.

She was ill for about five weeks and said she passed on a milder strain to her mother.

She was 20 and working with a team of archaeologists from the London University in Launceston, Cornwall.

She said: "I had been excavating a medieval midden full of household refuse dating back hundreds of years.

"Shortly after I started developing little abscesses all over my hands, more than 20 or 30 on each finger, and all over my palms. They were on my feet as well, between my toes and on the soles of my feet. I can still see the scars.

"Every one was like a needle going into me. I also had ulcers in my mouth, which made eating and talking very difficult.

"I did nothing about it for a while and for several weeks everybody just joked about it, saying I had got foot and mouth.

"After several weeks it hadn't got any better so I went to my doctor. He had a look at me and burst out laughing, saying I had indeed got foot and mouth.

"He did not send me for any tests or notify it to the authorities but he told me to keep away from animals.

"There was no outbreak at the time so the rubbish tip was the only place we could think of where I might have caught it.

"My mother caught it from me, although less seriously. It was not funny at all. It was very, very painful and I felt very ill."

Dr White wonders whether animals culled during the last major outbreak in 1966/67 had been buried near the old tip and the virus had survived in the soil.

A spokeswoman for the National Farmers' Union (NFU) suggested Dr White might have caught a virus which caused a condition called hand, foot and mouth, which was different to foot and mouth passed on from animals to humans.

But Dr White said her symptoms were far more severe than hand, foot and mouth, which children usually caught.

A spokeswoman for the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) said: "The overall risk of human infection with foot and mouth is small.

"The last human case reported in Britain occurred in 1966.

"Foot and mouth should not be confused with the human disease called hand, foot and mouth. This is an unrelated and usually mild viral infection, principally in children, and due to an entirely different virus.

"When you consider how many people have been exposed to the virus while trying to contain and eradicate it, it shows it is not very good at affecting humans."

Since the beginning of the outbreak, the PHLS has been alerted to six previous suspected human cases of foot and mouth but tests proved negative each time.

When asked if the virus could remain in the soil for years, an NFU spokesman said: "Nothing is totally impossible.

"But as far as I know it isn't possible for the virus to survive for years in the soil."

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, said it was difficult to comment on Dr White's illness because it occurred 26 years ago.

She said the virus could survive for months in the soil, depending on the level of heat and sunlight it was exposed to, but there was no way it could live for years.