Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. The National Veterinary School of Leon came up
Speaker 1: in our recent episode on the History of Rabies that
Speaker 1: first opened in seventeen sixty one and it was the
Speaker 1: first college of veterinary Medicine. It was also part of
Speaker 1: our Brief History of Veterinary Medicine, which came out on
Speaker 1: June one, seen, so we're bringing that one out today
Speaker 1: is our Saturday Classic, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson. So, Tracy, I had to run to
Speaker 1: the vet recently, UM, and I while I was there
Speaker 1: because it was kind of an emergency visit, my regular VET,
Speaker 1: who I love and a door and have been with
Speaker 1: more than a decade was in surgery so she could
Speaker 1: not see us. And we saw another VET at the
Speaker 1: practice that I had never met before, and she's fairly
Speaker 1: new and she was lovely, and she was telling me
Speaker 1: this story about how she had just gotten back from Africa. Um.
Speaker 1: She had gone with a group to Malawi where they
Speaker 1: have been having really big issues with Raby's outbreaks. And
Speaker 1: basically they go and they do rabies vaccinations on literally
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands and thousands of dogs. You told me
Speaker 1: this number, and it was bind bogglingly huge number, she
Speaker 1: told me, as an estimated seventeen thousand, so many. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And part of it is that in Malawi, like it's
Speaker 1: not so much that everyone's worried about the dogs because
Speaker 1: the dogs are not seen as like pets the same
Speaker 1: way we have pets here in the United States and
Speaker 1: many of the many other places in the world. But
Speaker 1: it was because this raby's outbreak had been causing problems
Speaker 1: where children were getting bit by rabid dogs, and so
Speaker 1: they were trying to address it that way. And she
Speaker 1: and I got into this discussion about how animals are
Speaker 1: treated much differently and like they don't have the same
Speaker 1: kind of approach to veterinary care because they're working animals.
Speaker 1: It's culturally just very very different. Uh. And it got
Speaker 1: me thinking about veterinary history. So that is what we're
Speaker 1: going to cover today, a very brief history of veterinary medicine.
Speaker 1: It is not comprehensive by any means, because things were
Speaker 1: developing all over the world at different times, uh, and
Speaker 1: in different ways, with different cultures. That's what we're talking
Speaker 1: about today. There are also lots of indigenous practices that
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily have documentation on, but logically we know
Speaker 1: they existed correct uh, and there are The problem with
Speaker 1: that is that a lot of it, like Tracy said,
Speaker 1: is not documented, and what documentation there is is a
Speaker 1: little bit hazy and often seen through the eyes of
Speaker 1: a completely different culture, so the interpretation is really not
Speaker 1: entirely trustworthy. Um. So we're not going to cover everywhere
Speaker 1: in the world, but we're getting a pretty good sampling. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of European and US stuff, of course, but
Speaker 1: also uh, some stuff that was going on in India
Speaker 1: and China and the Middle East and how all of
Speaker 1: these different cultures were developing their own means of caring
Speaker 1: for animals. And a couple of caveats in addition to
Speaker 1: that is that we're not going to delve into veterinary
Speaker 1: care in terms of like the specificity of caring for
Speaker 1: zoo and aquarium animals. That is a whole other, fascinating
Speaker 1: realm of veterinary science, but it really is its own
Speaker 1: topic on its own, So we're focusing on care for
Speaker 1: animals in this one. That people would keep as working
Speaker 1: animals and pets like people. For lack of better phrasing,
Speaker 1: because I know not everyone likes the term ownership when
Speaker 1: it comes to animals. But for this, animals that would
Speaker 1: be owned by people. Uh and we I've debated over
Speaker 1: how to set this up in terms of like if
Speaker 1: it would be better to go with each individual culture
Speaker 1: in their timeline, But what I ended up doing was
Speaker 1: going more or less chronologically. There are some overlaps of
Speaker 1: where things are developing over hundreds of years where it's
Speaker 1: not entirely chronological, but I went that way instead. So
Speaker 1: geographically speaking, we're doing a lot of traveling and bouncing
Speaker 1: around the world, so buckle up for that. We're going
Speaker 1: to start off with ancient times in a History of
Speaker 1: Veterinary Medicine from nineteen thirty nine that's in Iowa States
Speaker 1: Digital Repository. The opening begins the birth of veterinary art
Speaker 1: probably preceded that of human medicine and biological existence. Food
Speaker 1: is the primitive requirement. Veterinary medicine sustains life, human medicine
Speaker 1: preserves it. An awareness of animal health in ancient times
Speaker 1: is even mentioned in the Bible. While the directives of
Speaker 1: Moses to his peoples, who inspect animal flesh intended for
Speaker 1: eating is about the cleanliness of items to be consumed.
Speaker 1: It also indicates that the health of animals was on
Speaker 1: people's minds, but even before that time, humans were obviously
Speaker 1: considering animal well being. Once any type of animal was domesticated,
Speaker 1: the humans who lived alongside those animals would naturally become
Speaker 1: aware of illnesses that would have probably gone unnoticed otherwise. Additionally,
Speaker 1: keeping animal as together would promote the spread of infectious diseases,
Speaker 1: so it was in humans best interests to try to
Speaker 1: treat these problems. And while there's some evidence that people
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, for example, we're applying treatments that
Speaker 1: could be categorized as rudimentary veterinary medicine for their flocks.
Speaker 1: As early as nine thousand b C. The earliest known
Speaker 1: individual who is labeled as a healer of animals was,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to butcher this name because I could
Speaker 1: not find a good pronunciation guide for it, was Ulu Galladina,
Speaker 1: who lived in Mesopotamia around three thousand BC. During the
Speaker 1: same time, there were veterinarians mentioned who served as doctors
Speaker 1: of oxen and doctors of donkeys, but none are specifically
Speaker 1: called out by name, and there really is not much
Speaker 1: information about either of those jobs. Approximately five hundred years later,
Speaker 1: writings dealing with the care of horses and cattle started
Speaker 1: appearing in China. Traditional Chinese veterinary medicine has been described
Speaker 1: as a branch of traditional Chinese medicine, and the two
Speaker 1: of them developed concurrently with medical treatments for humans, often
Speaker 1: being adapted for use with animals. This included veterinary acupuncture,
Speaker 1: although the first Chinese book about treating animals with acupuncture
Speaker 1: didn't appear until the seventh century BC. The Aschoona Code
Speaker 1: appeared in Mesopotamia around twenty b C, and in it,
Speaker 1: rabies is clearly discussed via laws about mad dogs that
Speaker 1: made the owners of mad dogs liable if one of
Speaker 1: their dogs were to bite and kill someone. Penalties of
Speaker 1: payment were clearly established in these laws and around the
Speaker 1: same time, but believed to have been written slightly later.
Speaker 1: The Code of Hammurabi set rules for how much veterinarians
Speaker 1: could charge for their services. The Calhoun Papyri, written during
Speaker 1: the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, which ran from twenty forty
Speaker 1: to seventeen eighty two, BC included a text on veterinary medicine,
Speaker 1: including herbal remedies for treating domestic animals, and as we
Speaker 1: mentioned in our episode on cat, throughout history and as
Speaker 1: pretty common knowledge, few lines were much loved and even
Speaker 1: revered in ancient Egypt, and cats have been found mummified
Speaker 1: in much the same way that humans were Vedic literature
Speaker 1: dating as far back as fift b C includes descriptions
Speaker 1: of protective ointments for cows and horses as well as humans.
Speaker 1: These writings also outline the foundations of what would become
Speaker 1: general medical knowledge for both humans and animals, and there
Speaker 1: is discussion of observing animals behavior when they're sick to
Speaker 1: learn more about the potential curative properties of plants, stating quote,
Speaker 1: the wild boar knows the herb which will cure it,
Speaker 1: as does the mongoose. So they were basically advocating, watch
Speaker 1: what animals do when they're sick, and you're going to
Speaker 1: find plants that might help humans too. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: take a moment to say, don't don't rely on that
Speaker 1: in the wild. No, no, no, they were advocating that.
Speaker 1: Then today I say go to a doctor. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: there are definitely things that animals are fine eating that
Speaker 1: will kill humans did. Many Vedic texts were translated into Tibetan, Arabic,
Speaker 1: and Persian, and there are legends incorporated into the included
Speaker 1: discussions of animal care, so God's revealed to the to
Speaker 1: the people how to care for horses and elephants, for example.
Speaker 1: Later Hippocrates wrote of animal health around four hundred BC.
Speaker 1: He described hydro thorax that's an accumulation of water or
Speaker 1: fluid on the lungs in livestock animals such as sheep, pigs,
Speaker 1: and oxen, and he also described a cow having a
Speaker 1: dislocated hip. Livestock ailments were also described in the fourth
Speaker 1: century BC, with that being by Aristotle. This writing features
Speaker 1: a detailed description of an ailment in dogs that we
Speaker 1: now recognize as being an account of rabies. And rabies,
Speaker 1: of course, is not confined to dogs, but in Aristotle's
Speaker 1: writing he associated with dogs. Dogs are probably the animal
Speaker 1: that humans are most likely to be having contact with,
Speaker 1: especially in earlier injuries that were likely to carry rabies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Horse wellness, including descriptions on proper care, was discussed by
Speaker 1: Athenian soldier Xenophon in his book on horsemanship, and in
Speaker 1: it he states quote and just as with human beings,
Speaker 1: so with the horse. All diseases are more curable at
Speaker 1: their commencement than after they have become chronic or been
Speaker 1: wrongly treated. He also mentioned that horses could have too
Speaker 1: much blood, which would require a veterinary doctor to address.
Speaker 1: But these were early times. We now know you can't
Speaker 1: have too much blood. UH. A lot of his advice,
Speaker 1: though it was interesting, was preventative. He really really advocated
Speaker 1: bolstering the horse's strength and health to stave off any issues. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in India, King Ashoka opened the first animal hospital known
Speaker 1: in the world around to fifty BC. He also mandated
Speaker 1: herbal medicine availability for both people and animals, and provided
Speaker 1: for the cultivation of metal medically beneficial plants and places
Speaker 1: that lacked them. In Rome, both Virgil, writing in the
Speaker 1: first century b C. And Pliny the Elder writing in
Speaker 1: the first century made mention in their written work of
Speaker 1: ailments that took out large numbers of animals, and Columella,
Speaker 1: writing around the same time as Pliny the Elder this
Speaker 1: was around UH the year fifty five, wrote a book
Speaker 1: on animal husbandry that discussed disease spread and the necessity
Speaker 1: of isolating sick animals to curtail it, stating the diseased
Speaker 1: must be separated from the sound that not so much
Speaker 1: as one may come among them, which may with the contagion,
Speaker 1: affect the rest. Next up, we'll talk about Galen and
Speaker 1: the advances made in our knowledge of animal physiology while
Speaker 1: trying to study up on human physiology. But first we
Speaker 1: will pause for a word from a sponsor. Galen, who
Speaker 1: lived in the second century, is known primarily as a
Speaker 1: physician rather than a veterinarian. But while he is doing
Speaker 1: the work that would eventually give him his historical standing
Speaker 1: in human medicine, he also studied animals, often dissecting them
Speaker 1: as part of his study of anatomy, and this was
Speaker 1: primarily due to the taboo over dissection of human corpses.
Speaker 1: Many of the discoveries he made regarding basic physiology applied
Speaker 1: to many species, including animals, and those discoveries included the
Speaker 1: carriage of blood by arteries, for example, But it also
Speaker 1: meant that he landed at conclusions that were really off base,
Speaker 1: such as his writing about the uterus, which is based
Speaker 1: on dogs and consequently has some errors. Also Just in
Speaker 1: case you didn't know, the word husbandry doesn't refer specifically
Speaker 1: to breeding. Sometimes people use it that way, but it
Speaker 1: really means a general care of animals, which can include breathing,
Speaker 1: breeding for healthy lines. One of my favorite things that
Speaker 1: includes his husbandry behaviors that you teach animals to make
Speaker 1: easier treat them. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things.
Speaker 1: Uh many moons ago. I used to volunteer or at
Speaker 1: the Georgia Aquarium in their animal husbandry division, and I
Speaker 1: would say that and people would be like, do you
Speaker 1: make animals mate? And I was like, no, that's not
Speaker 1: what a husbandry means, Like we're not we're not actually
Speaker 1: like marrying them. There were very weird discussions that would
Speaker 1: sometimes happen. Um. I feel like that is a mistake
Speaker 1: people often make when they are children or learning language. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or if you've never really like looked into, you know,
Speaker 1: animal care beyond just like I have a dog and
Speaker 1: if he didn't take to the vet, you may not
Speaker 1: know that that's what that term means. There's no shame
Speaker 1: in it. It just was charming. The Sanskrit text known
Speaker 1: as the artist Sastra, written and revised over the course
Speaker 1: of the second century BC through the third century is
Speaker 1: a political treatise, but it also includes the mention of
Speaker 1: a military practice of having a veterinarian travel with armies
Speaker 1: to tend to tired, injured, elderly, and sick animals. Circa
Speaker 1: the third century Chinese book titled pocket Book of Emergency
Speaker 1: Therapies spelled out how to treat horses for a number
Speaker 1: of ailments, including sunstroke, which was treated by blood letting.
Speaker 1: Stop draining horses. People like, they don't have too much blood,
Speaker 1: but they didn't know, and they were doing the best
Speaker 1: they could with what the knowledge they had. So I
Speaker 1: was more thinking. It is currently about eighty seven degrees
Speaker 1: in the room I'm recording in. Please do not drain
Speaker 1: my blood. Maybe you would feel cooler. Writing in the
Speaker 1: fifth century, Vegetius wrote a treatise on veterinary medicine. Again, this,
Speaker 1: like much of what we've been discussing up to this point,
Speaker 1: is focused on horses and livestock, and while he has
Speaker 1: been lauded by some as the father of veterinary medicine
Speaker 1: as a consequence, critics point to the derivative nature of
Speaker 1: his work as evidence that he really doesn't deserve that title,
Speaker 1: but the key contribution that he made to animal science
Speaker 1: was integrating the most current medical knowledge of his time
Speaker 1: with an approach to the care and treatment of animals.
Speaker 1: And there is, by the way, still some debate about
Speaker 1: whether this is the same Vegetius who also wrote military treatises.
Speaker 1: Some will say yes, that's definitely the same person, and
Speaker 1: others to think not so much, that it's two separate people.
Speaker 1: By the seventh century, China had a well defined veterinary
Speaker 1: services system and an established school for training veterinarians. A
Speaker 1: book called A Collection of Ways to Care For and
Speaker 1: Treat Horses provided standardized information for students and offered information
Speaker 1: that combined all these various learnings and treatment therapies that
Speaker 1: have been described in earlier texts. And we don't have
Speaker 1: a great deal of literature regarding animal care in the
Speaker 1: early Middle Ages of Europe, though there was certainly study
Speaker 1: of horse physiology and health in Arab occupied Spain beginning
Speaker 1: in the seven hundreds. Caring for horses, of course, continued
Speaker 1: to be a significant driver for work in veterinary care
Speaker 1: around the world for centuries. Sometime prior to the tenth century,
Speaker 1: a Sanskrit x titled Complete Ierbatic System for Horses was
Speaker 1: written by a person named Sally Jotra, who went on
Speaker 1: to produce additional books as well, including In Praise of
Speaker 1: Horses and Treatise on the Marks of Horses. A Tibetan
Speaker 1: translation of Complete Aerbatic System for Horses also appeared in
Speaker 1: the eleventh century, and it was translated into Arabic in
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century. Yeah, that particular text became really popular
Speaker 1: and was used in a lot of different places. And
Speaker 1: another Sanskrit text with an uncertain publication date is the
Speaker 1: Four part iur Veda for Elephants, and this treatise described
Speaker 1: serious illness, minor ailments, anatomy, surgery and medicines and diet
Speaker 1: for well being for elephants. It's a really comprehensive guide
Speaker 1: to elephant care, borrowing advice and techniques from earlier centuries
Speaker 1: and incorporating it with newer beliefs and observations. And one
Speaker 1: of the basic ideas present in all of the text
Speaker 1: we've mentioned from India specifically is the importance of preventative care.
Speaker 1: Cleanliness of moles and of their food, with warnings against overfeeding,
Speaker 1: were commonly promoted as ways to stave off disease. In
Speaker 1: the early half of the fourteenth century, an Italian farrier
Speaker 1: named Jordana Ruffo wrote a work that was on horse medicine,
Speaker 1: and this particular volume built to some degree on the
Speaker 1: previous work of Galen, but it was written based on
Speaker 1: his extensive work with horses more than anything else. He
Speaker 1: rarely made reference to earlier works in this text, instead
Speaker 1: providing his own observations. Ruville also issued a lot of
Speaker 1: the more old wives tale style of medicine that had
Speaker 1: been used prior to this time, and favored a much
Speaker 1: more straightforward approach to animal care that are allied on
Speaker 1: evidence based conclusions, which is a shocker. It's not really
Speaker 1: a shocker. So this was really a big step forward.
Speaker 1: He yeah, there were definitely a lot of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of mystical style. Uh. There were even some horoscope
Speaker 1: based like animal care things that had been going on,
Speaker 1: and he was like, no, no, no, just look at
Speaker 1: the horse, see what is wrong. Addressed the problem we have.
Speaker 1: We've dropped, we've name dropped the podcast saw Bones a
Speaker 1: lot um, but they have so many amazing shows that
Speaker 1: are about various treatments, largely that came to popularity before
Speaker 1: we really had an evidence based system of medicine in
Speaker 1: the West. Yeah. As for other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: there were veterinarian text in the fourteenth century Memluk period
Speaker 1: when the Islamic Empire was in power in large portions
Speaker 1: of Africa and Asia, and these even include illustrations of
Speaker 1: horses being given medicine through a tube inserted into the
Speaker 1: animal's mouth, and the writing that explained this illustration said
Speaker 1: that this was an effective way to administer treatments to
Speaker 1: resistant animals. Texts of Hippocrates and Galen also circulated through
Speaker 1: the Islamic Empire, translated into Arabic, and unlike European animal care,
Speaker 1: which focused on verses and live stock, it appears that
Speaker 1: in parts of Africa and Asia where those texts were available,
Speaker 1: the ideas in them were applied to all kinds of animals,
Speaker 1: including horses and livestock, but also cats and dogs, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even birds. I mean they really it was a
Speaker 1: much more diversified approach to caring for animals than just
Speaker 1: focusing on on the working animals of livestock. Uh Jos
Speaker 1: van Gistel, who was a Flemish man whose name I've
Speaker 1: probably butchered, who traveled through the Islamic Empire for four
Speaker 1: years in the fourteen eighties, actually mentioned a cat shelter
Speaker 1: in his writings about Damascus. This shelter was adjacent to
Speaker 1: a hospital for the poor, and to the best of
Speaker 1: my knowledge and it's it's mentioned in several places that
Speaker 1: this is probably the first known cat shelter specifically in
Speaker 1: the world, but there's always the possibility there were others
Speaker 1: that we just haven't didn't stumble across in our writings.
Speaker 1: There were also practitioners of animal medicine who specialized in
Speaker 1: things such as horse obstetrics. Since horses were of vide
Speaker 1: part of the culture, it makes sense that their care
Speaker 1: might be more specialized than the more general medicine practiced
Speaker 1: on other animals. Over All, the Islamic Empire had a
Speaker 1: fairly comprehensive approach to caring for animals of all kinds,
Speaker 1: and books on horse care and anatomy continued to be
Speaker 1: produced in Europe during this time as well, and the
Speaker 1: movable type printing press meant that such books could be
Speaker 1: shared with a wider audience than ever before. Carlo Ruini
Speaker 1: of Bologna wrote a two volume examination of equine physiology
Speaker 1: titled Anatomy of the Horse Infirmity and Its Remedies. When
Speaker 1: he wrote it is still a little bit unclear. It
Speaker 1: wasn't published until after his death in fIF but it
Speaker 1: was translated and republished throughout the sixteen hundreds. Volume one
Speaker 1: of ruin He's in depth work is dedicated to describing
Speaker 1: equine anatomy, while volume two focuses on identifying and treating disease.
Speaker 1: Much of the science discussed regarding horse ailments is based
Speaker 1: on the four humors Coloric, Sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholics. There
Speaker 1: was a lot out of work still to be done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: again advanced for the time. Uh. And it was one
Speaker 1: of those things where these books that were circulating, we're
Speaker 1: kind of enabling people to care for their own animals
Speaker 1: outside of the being necessarily like veterinarians. In the late
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, Philippe Etienne la Fosse, the son of a farrier,
Speaker 1: wrote a number of books about horse care, featuring colored
Speaker 1: plates to illustrate the text, and other writers quickly followed
Speaker 1: with their own books about equine health and illness. But
Speaker 1: even though there was more and more information being made
Speaker 1: available in Europe at the time, there was still no
Speaker 1: formalized course of study for animal care, remaining ahead of
Speaker 1: Western practices. Asian veterinary practices really expanded by the mid
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds to include standardized care of smaller animals such
Speaker 1: as dogs and cats, in addition to the larger livestock species.
Speaker 1: And we're about to talk about why and how Europe
Speaker 1: finally established formal veterinary training, but before we do, let
Speaker 1: pause for a word from one of our sponsors. The
Speaker 1: catalyst for veterinary schools in Europe was in fact, illness.
Speaker 1: As render pest, scabies, pneumonia, and other ailments became common
Speaker 1: enough in their outbreaks is to sometimes be described as plagues,
Speaker 1: it became apparent that doctors educated and specializing in animal
Speaker 1: care were needed. To that end, the first established college
Speaker 1: of veterinary Medicine opened in Leon, France in seventeen sixty one.
Speaker 1: It was set up in what had once been a
Speaker 1: hotel and then had been converted into a house. Students
Speaker 1: from around Europe, which thirty eight of them at all,
Speaker 1: were enrolled, went opened. Early courses at the college included dissection, pharmacy, surgery,
Speaker 1: and horsemanship, among others, and the school was so successful
Speaker 1: that the Leon Veterinary College was made a royal school
Speaker 1: by King Louis the fifteen just four years after the
Speaker 1: school at Leon, and a second was established in out four,
Speaker 1: France in seventeen sixty five to meet demand. Claude bourge Law,
Speaker 1: the founder of the veterinary school Leon, had taken something
Speaker 1: of a gamble. Ongoing financing of the school was unstable
Speaker 1: at best when it opened, and so one of the
Speaker 1: ways he proved it's worth was putting his students to work,
Speaker 1: using their newly acquired knowledge to address outbreaks of render pest.
Speaker 1: After only six months he was able to show quite
Speaker 1: clearly the benefits of their work, which is how things
Speaker 1: took off so quickly. Yeah, those students were basically like
Speaker 1: working actively at the same time they were learning, so
Speaker 1: they were really really uh learning on the job and
Speaker 1: helping to address problems that were going on in the
Speaker 1: area around them. And this success of the French schools
Speaker 1: led to the establishment of schools throughout Europe. By the
Speaker 1: end of the seventeen seventies, there were veterinary colleges in Dresden, Copenhagen, Hanover,
Speaker 1: and Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, Munich and London all had veterinary
Speaker 1: schools by the end of the eighteenth century, and from
Speaker 1: they are the educational offerings continued to expand on the
Speaker 1: European continent. The first veterinary school in North America was
Speaker 1: established in Ontario, Canada, in eighteen sixty two, so it
Speaker 1: took almost a hundred years before North America got its
Speaker 1: own veterinary college. As for the United States, that really
Speaker 1: wasn't until after the Revolutionary War that there was enough
Speaker 1: density in domesticated animals for people to see animal based
Speaker 1: disease events and the need for specialized medicine to address them.
Speaker 1: Colonists had managed their own animals up to that point,
Speaker 1: but as the new nation began to grow and the
Speaker 1: animal population grew along with it, needs changed. Early on,
Speaker 1: the low prestige jobs of cow leach and ferrier developed
Speaker 1: to see to the needs of cows and livestock in
Speaker 1: the case of the cow leach, and horses in the
Speaker 1: case of the farrier, but there was no schooling associated
Speaker 1: with either job. They were largely based on intuition and guesswork.
Speaker 1: In seventeen nine, an outbreak of Texas cattle fever had
Speaker 1: moved from the South, where it was normally seen farther
Speaker 1: north into both Pennsylvania and Maryland, and this resulted in
Speaker 1: the first legislative act connected to animal disease in the
Speaker 1: United States. North Carolina's legislature forbade cattle that had passed
Speaker 1: through areas with long leaf pine into or through their state.
Speaker 1: While it was not yet known that Texas cattle fever
Speaker 1: was caused by a protozoan parasite, the connection that ticks
Speaker 1: were involved had been figured out, and ticks were known
Speaker 1: to thrive in long leaf pine forests, so that is
Speaker 1: why if a cattle had been driven through such forests,
Speaker 1: they were not allowed in North Carolina. Incidentally, it would
Speaker 1: be another century before that protozoan cause of Texas cattle
Speaker 1: fever was identified by a pathologist named Theobald Smith. But
Speaker 1: as the United States headed into the eighteen hundreds, even
Speaker 1: though there were no veterinary colleges in the country, European
Speaker 1: educated veterinarians offering care of livestock started to set up practices.
Speaker 1: These were primarily in metropolitan areas along East Coast. Because
Speaker 1: it was a new industry and was unregulated in the States,
Speaker 1: there were plenty of people claiming to be veterinarians who
Speaker 1: had no real schooling or credentials to speak of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some pretty disturbing stories, uh that I did
Speaker 1: not include here, but you know, basically people showing up
Speaker 1: and going, yeah, I'm a horse dent does don't pull
Speaker 1: your horse's teeth. Um, that really may have had some
Speaker 1: practical experience but had no formal training at all. The
Speaker 1: New York College of Veterinary Surgeons was established in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, and from then to the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: dozens of schools open throughout the United States, and additional
Speaker 1: regulation established more consistency across all colleges for comprehensive training.
Speaker 1: Between eighteen sixty six and nineteen thirty four, twenty thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred and sixty two people graduated from US veterinary colleges.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty three, the American Veterinary Medical Association formed
Speaker 1: after a number of veterinarians had been corresponding with one
Speaker 1: another and realized that an official affiliation might be beneficial.
Speaker 1: Forty delegates met in New York for the first meeting.
Speaker 1: From They were from New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine,
Speaker 1: Ohio and Delaware, and just as European livestock being ravaged
Speaker 1: by illness led to the birth of the Veterinary College,
Speaker 1: outbreaks of disease among animals in the US led to
Speaker 1: the establishment of the Bureau of Animal Industry. After decades
Speaker 1: of fighting off one episodotic after another, the b AI
Speaker 1: was formed in eighteen eighty four with the signing of
Speaker 1: the Animal Industry Act by President Chester A. Arthur. Since
Speaker 1: anesthesia wasn't used in the treatment of humans until the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds, animals were definitely not getting yet in
Speaker 1: the West either. Sedatives had been used for animals to
Speaker 1: varying degrees in other parts of the globe, though, many
Speaker 1: of the untrained and unethical people who were claiming to
Speaker 1: be veterinarians in the United States were undoubtedly causing many
Speaker 1: horses and other livestock a good deal of trauma. Because
Speaker 1: of all this, it's a clear example of how medical
Speaker 1: Charlottanism was a danger to animals as well as two people.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o three, the first woman to graduate from
Speaker 1: veterinary school in the United States was doctor Mignon Nicholson,
Speaker 1: who earned her degree from McKillop Veterinary College in Chicago,
Speaker 1: but this didn't exactly open the floodgates to women veterinarians.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifteen, there were a total of four women
Speaker 1: who graduated from US veterinary schools and went into practice,
Speaker 1: so even twelve years later, only four. In nineteen o four,
Speaker 1: China's first Western style veterinary medical school opened, and its
Speaker 1: focus was primarily on horse care. All this was a
Speaker 1: move toward modernization in quotation marks, traditional Chinese veterinary medicine
Speaker 1: was also still quite common. On October four of nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Army Veterinary Corps was established. This was, not, however,
Speaker 1: the first time animal care was included in parts of
Speaker 1: the U. S. Military. Farriers had been army personnel as
Speaker 1: far back as the late seventeen hundreds. On December one,
Speaker 1: Dr Eileen cust became the first woman to graduate from
Speaker 1: the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, becoming Great Britain's first
Speaker 1: woman veterinarian. She was fifty four at the time and
Speaker 1: had been denied the opportunity to sit for her examination
Speaker 1: examinations twenty years prior when she actually finished her initial
Speaker 1: schooling and veterinary science in Edinburgh. Yeah, she is someone
Speaker 1: I'm I would potentially like to do as a topic
Speaker 1: on her own leader. But basically she had been working
Speaker 1: in the field that twenty years but had never been
Speaker 1: allowed to actually take her final exams and graduate veterinary school,
Speaker 1: even though she had done all of the coursework. In
Speaker 1: ninety nine, I ran across this and it struck me
Speaker 1: as kind of fascinating. It was estimated that the cost
Speaker 1: of a veterinary education in a German school was around
Speaker 1: twelve thousand dollars, a sum that seems paltry by today's standards,
Speaker 1: but really was a very huge investment at the time.
Speaker 1: During China's Cultural Revolution, which we covered a while back
Speaker 1: in a four part series, traditional Chinese veterinary medicine as
Speaker 1: well as traditional Chinese medicine for people, were banned. After
Speaker 1: the Cultural Revolution. However, many practitioners of both veterinary medicine
Speaker 1: and human focused medicine once again turned to traditional methods
Speaker 1: to enhance their modern therapies. This approach came to be
Speaker 1: called complementary and alternative veterinary medicine or integrated medicine. By
Speaker 1: the middle of the twentieth century, veterinary schools were well
Speaker 1: established throughout the globe, and while World War Two had
Speaker 1: fostered a surge in women working as veterinarians, that dropped
Speaker 1: off in the nineteen fifties but then built back up
Speaker 1: over time. Today there are roughly an equal number of
Speaker 1: women and men in veterinary practice in the United States,
Speaker 1: although veterinary schools actually have seventy women's students. As post
Speaker 1: World War two leisure lifestyles developed, the place of pets
Speaker 1: became a lot more elevated in Western culture, and consequently
Speaker 1: there was a significant growth of small animal practices to
Speaker 1: care for beloved household pets that really started in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, where most veterinarians prior to that time where
Speaker 1: large animal caregivers. Things began to shift to the point
Speaker 1: where now most veterinary school graduates are likely headed into
Speaker 1: small animal practice. In the last five decades, the science
Speaker 1: of treating animals has also expanded significantly. Today they are
Speaker 1: specialist veterinarians in almost any field you would find for
Speaker 1: the treatment of humans, so dental specialist, neurologists, and oncologists
Speaker 1: are all available to provide animals with specialized treatment as well.
Speaker 1: As a host of other specialty areas of service. Consequently,
Speaker 1: it's estimated that Americans will spend sixteen point sixty two
Speaker 1: billion dollars that is billion with a B on veterinary
Speaker 1: care in twenty seventeen. Yeah, we have come a long way.
Speaker 1: It's a it's fascinating to me to think about. Like
Speaker 1: I said, when I had that discussion with the vet
Speaker 1: that we saw recently, uh how here in the United States,
Speaker 1: not everywhere, but certainly for a lot of people. You know,
Speaker 1: our pets are very sort of pampered and fussed over
Speaker 1: and loved and adored, and so it was sort of
Speaker 1: a good reminder to me when she was talking about
Speaker 1: how no, no animals there are are there for protection
Speaker 1: of their property and territory and that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1: So it's a good reminder to me that like not
Speaker 1: everyone is is operating under the same circumstances. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: read a really fascinating article recently that was about efforts
Speaker 1: to make UH veterinary care more available in indigenous communities,
Speaker 1: which sometimes have their own UH like indigenous practices for
Speaker 1: caring for animals UM and how to find ways to
Speaker 1: do that that are simultaneously respectful um, and make sure
Speaker 1: that animals are able to get uh like western style
Speaker 1: care when it's actually needed. Um. Because as with a
Speaker 1: lot of things, there are some places where like the
Speaker 1: western style medicine is the thing that's going to fix
Speaker 1: the problem um, and times where like the more traditional
Speaker 1: practice is going to be completely fine. So uh, that
Speaker 1: was fascinating. Also. Yeah, one of the pieces that I
Speaker 1: read about veterinary medicine and China talked about the traditional
Speaker 1: style of treatments that included things like are both therapies
Speaker 1: and acupuncture and other things versus modern medicine and how
Speaker 1: in some places, particularly in more rural or less financially
Speaker 1: abundant communities, sometimes they relied on the more traditional types
Speaker 1: because they were more cost effective, you know, they were
Speaker 1: much more affordable to people. But that they are similarly
Speaker 1: trying to continue to integrate both traditional and modern medical
Speaker 1: practices to kind of create a more holistic approach to
Speaker 1: the whole thing, uh and offer options. It's really a
Speaker 1: fascinating uh field when you think about that. Like, again,
Speaker 1: I think of it as so much of my experience
Speaker 1: comes from Western medicine and and it's like, yes, my
Speaker 1: cat has a problem, we don't know what's wrong with
Speaker 1: his back. Let's get an m r I. But that's
Speaker 1: that's not always how everyone thinks, and it's good to
Speaker 1: be reminded of that. Um. By the way, my cat's
Speaker 1: had an m R I is just fine. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode
Speaker 1: is out of the archive, if you heard an email
Speaker 1: address or Facebook U r L or something similar over
Speaker 1: the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Speaker 1: Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart
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