May 14, 2022 • 34 mins
This 2017 episode covers how animals and humans have been living together for centuries, but standardized veterinary care developed over a long period of time in many different places.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. The National Veterinary School of Leon came up
in our recent episode on the History of Rabies that
first opened in seventeen sixty one and it was the
first college of veterinary Medicine. It was also part of
our Brief History of Veterinary Medicine, which came out on
June one, seen, so we're bringing that one out today
(00:23):
is our Saturday Classic, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You
Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm
Tracy V. Wilson. So, Tracy, I had to run to
(00:47):
the vet recently, UM, and I while I was there
because it was kind of an emergency visit, my regular VET,
who I love and a door and have been with
more than a decade was in surgery so she could
not see us. And we saw another VET at the
practice that I had never met before, and she's fairly
new and she was lovely, and she was telling me
this story about how she had just gotten back from Africa. Um.
(01:09):
She had gone with a group to Malawi where they
have been having really big issues with Raby's outbreaks. And
basically they go and they do rabies vaccinations on literally
thousands and thousands and thousands of dogs. You told me
this number, and it was bind bogglingly huge number, she
told me, as an estimated seventeen thousand, so many. Yeah,
(01:30):
And part of it is that in Malawi, like it's
not so much that everyone's worried about the dogs because
the dogs are not seen as like pets the same
way we have pets here in the United States and
many of the many other places in the world. But
it was because this raby's outbreak had been causing problems
where children were getting bit by rabid dogs, and so
they were trying to address it that way. And she
(01:51):
and I got into this discussion about how animals are
treated much differently and like they don't have the same
kind of approach to veterinary care because they're working animals.
It's culturally just very very different. Uh. And it got
me thinking about veterinary history. So that is what we're
going to cover today, a very brief history of veterinary medicine.
It is not comprehensive by any means, because things were
(02:12):
developing all over the world at different times, uh, and
in different ways, with different cultures. That's what we're talking
about today. There are also lots of indigenous practices that
we don't necessarily have documentation on, but logically we know
they existed correct uh, and there are The problem with
that is that a lot of it, like Tracy said,
is not documented, and what documentation there is is a
(02:35):
little bit hazy and often seen through the eyes of
a completely different culture, so the interpretation is really not
entirely trustworthy. Um. So we're not going to cover everywhere
in the world, but we're getting a pretty good sampling. Um.
A lot of European and US stuff, of course, but
also uh, some stuff that was going on in India
(02:56):
and China and the Middle East and how all of
these different cultures were developing their own means of caring
for animals. And a couple of caveats in addition to
that is that we're not going to delve into veterinary
care in terms of like the specificity of caring for
zoo and aquarium animals. That is a whole other, fascinating
(03:16):
realm of veterinary science, but it really is its own
topic on its own, So we're focusing on care for
animals in this one. That people would keep as working
animals and pets like people. For lack of better phrasing,
because I know not everyone likes the term ownership when
it comes to animals. But for this, animals that would
be owned by people. Uh and we I've debated over
(03:38):
how to set this up in terms of like if
it would be better to go with each individual culture
in their timeline, But what I ended up doing was
going more or less chronologically. There are some overlaps of
where things are developing over hundreds of years where it's
not entirely chronological, but I went that way instead. So
geographically speaking, we're doing a lot of traveling and bouncing
around the world, so buckle up for that. We're going
(03:59):
to start off with ancient times in a History of
Veterinary Medicine from nineteen thirty nine that's in Iowa States
Digital Repository. The opening begins the birth of veterinary art
probably preceded that of human medicine and biological existence. Food
is the primitive requirement. Veterinary medicine sustains life, human medicine
(04:23):
preserves it. An awareness of animal health in ancient times
is even mentioned in the Bible. While the directives of
Moses to his peoples, who inspect animal flesh intended for
eating is about the cleanliness of items to be consumed.
It also indicates that the health of animals was on
people's minds, but even before that time, humans were obviously
(04:45):
considering animal well being. Once any type of animal was domesticated,
the humans who lived alongside those animals would naturally become
aware of illnesses that would have probably gone unnoticed otherwise. Additionally,
keeping animal as together would promote the spread of infectious diseases,
so it was in humans best interests to try to
(05:05):
treat these problems. And while there's some evidence that people
in the Middle East, for example, we're applying treatments that
could be categorized as rudimentary veterinary medicine for their flocks.
As early as nine thousand b C. The earliest known
individual who is labeled as a healer of animals was,
and I'm going to butcher this name because I could
not find a good pronunciation guide for it, was Ulu Galladina,
(05:28):
who lived in Mesopotamia around three thousand BC. During the
same time, there were veterinarians mentioned who served as doctors
of oxen and doctors of donkeys, but none are specifically
called out by name, and there really is not much
information about either of those jobs. Approximately five hundred years later,
writings dealing with the care of horses and cattle started
(05:51):
appearing in China. Traditional Chinese veterinary medicine has been described
as a branch of traditional Chinese medicine, and the two
of them developed concurrently with medical treatments for humans, often
being adapted for use with animals. This included veterinary acupuncture,
although the first Chinese book about treating animals with acupuncture
didn't appear until the seventh century BC. The Aschoona Code
(06:16):
appeared in Mesopotamia around twenty b C, and in it,
rabies is clearly discussed via laws about mad dogs that
made the owners of mad dogs liable if one of
their dogs were to bite and kill someone. Penalties of
payment were clearly established in these laws and around the
same time, but believed to have been written slightly later.
(06:38):
The Code of Hammurabi set rules for how much veterinarians
could charge for their services. The Calhoun Papyri, written during
the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, which ran from twenty forty
to seventeen eighty two, BC included a text on veterinary medicine,
including herbal remedies for treating domestic animals, and as we
(06:58):
mentioned in our episode on cat, throughout history and as
pretty common knowledge, few lines were much loved and even
revered in ancient Egypt, and cats have been found mummified
in much the same way that humans were Vedic literature
dating as far back as fift b C includes descriptions
of protective ointments for cows and horses as well as humans.
(07:19):
These writings also outline the foundations of what would become
general medical knowledge for both humans and animals, and there
is discussion of observing animals behavior when they're sick to
learn more about the potential curative properties of plants, stating quote,
the wild boar knows the herb which will cure it,
as does the mongoose. So they were basically advocating, watch
(07:40):
what animals do when they're sick, and you're going to
find plants that might help humans too. I'm just gonna
take a moment to say, don't don't rely on that
in the wild. No, no, no, they were advocating that.
Then today I say go to a doctor. Yeah, well,
there are definitely things that animals are fine eating that
will kill humans did. Many Vedic texts were translated into Tibetan, Arabic,
(08:05):
and Persian, and there are legends incorporated into the included
discussions of animal care, so God's revealed to the to
the people how to care for horses and elephants, for example.
Later Hippocrates wrote of animal health around four hundred BC.
He described hydro thorax that's an accumulation of water or
fluid on the lungs in livestock animals such as sheep, pigs,
(08:28):
and oxen, and he also described a cow having a
dislocated hip. Livestock ailments were also described in the fourth
century BC, with that being by Aristotle. This writing features
a detailed description of an ailment in dogs that we
now recognize as being an account of rabies. And rabies,
of course, is not confined to dogs, but in Aristotle's
(08:49):
writing he associated with dogs. Dogs are probably the animal
that humans are most likely to be having contact with,
especially in earlier injuries that were likely to carry rabies. Yeah.
Horse wellness, including descriptions on proper care, was discussed by
Athenian soldier Xenophon in his book on horsemanship, and in
(09:12):
it he states quote and just as with human beings,
so with the horse. All diseases are more curable at
their commencement than after they have become chronic or been
wrongly treated. He also mentioned that horses could have too
much blood, which would require a veterinary doctor to address.
But these were early times. We now know you can't
have too much blood. UH. A lot of his advice,
(09:33):
though it was interesting, was preventative. He really really advocated
bolstering the horse's strength and health to stave off any issues. Meanwhile,
in India, King Ashoka opened the first animal hospital known
in the world around to fifty BC. He also mandated
herbal medicine availability for both people and animals, and provided
(09:54):
for the cultivation of metal medically beneficial plants and places
that lacked them. In Rome, both Virgil, writing in the
first century b C. And Pliny the Elder writing in
the first century made mention in their written work of
ailments that took out large numbers of animals, and Columella,
writing around the same time as Pliny the Elder this
(10:15):
was around UH the year fifty five, wrote a book
on animal husbandry that discussed disease spread and the necessity
of isolating sick animals to curtail it, stating the diseased
must be separated from the sound that not so much
as one may come among them, which may with the contagion,
affect the rest. Next up, we'll talk about Galen and
(10:37):
the advances made in our knowledge of animal physiology while
trying to study up on human physiology. But first we
will pause for a word from a sponsor. Galen, who
lived in the second century, is known primarily as a
physician rather than a veterinarian. But while he is doing
(11:00):
the work that would eventually give him his historical standing
in human medicine, he also studied animals, often dissecting them
as part of his study of anatomy, and this was
primarily due to the taboo over dissection of human corpses.
Many of the discoveries he made regarding basic physiology applied
to many species, including animals, and those discoveries included the
(11:21):
carriage of blood by arteries, for example, But it also
meant that he landed at conclusions that were really off base,
such as his writing about the uterus, which is based
on dogs and consequently has some errors. Also Just in
case you didn't know, the word husbandry doesn't refer specifically
to breeding. Sometimes people use it that way, but it
(11:42):
really means a general care of animals, which can include breathing,
breeding for healthy lines. One of my favorite things that
includes his husbandry behaviors that you teach animals to make
easier treat them. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things.
Uh many moons ago. I used to volunteer or at
the Georgia Aquarium in their animal husbandry division, and I
(12:03):
would say that and people would be like, do you
make animals mate? And I was like, no, that's not
what a husbandry means, Like we're not we're not actually
like marrying them. There were very weird discussions that would
sometimes happen. Um. I feel like that is a mistake
people often make when they are children or learning language. Yeah,
(12:26):
or if you've never really like looked into, you know,
animal care beyond just like I have a dog and
if he didn't take to the vet, you may not
know that that's what that term means. There's no shame
in it. It just was charming. The Sanskrit text known
as the artist Sastra, written and revised over the course
of the second century BC through the third century is
(12:47):
a political treatise, but it also includes the mention of
a military practice of having a veterinarian travel with armies
to tend to tired, injured, elderly, and sick animals. Circa
the third century Chinese book titled pocket Book of Emergency
Therapies spelled out how to treat horses for a number
of ailments, including sunstroke, which was treated by blood letting.
(13:11):
Stop draining horses. People like, they don't have too much blood,
but they didn't know, and they were doing the best
they could with what the knowledge they had. So I
was more thinking. It is currently about eighty seven degrees
in the room I'm recording in. Please do not drain
my blood. Maybe you would feel cooler. Writing in the
(13:31):
fifth century, Vegetius wrote a treatise on veterinary medicine. Again, this,
like much of what we've been discussing up to this point,
is focused on horses and livestock, and while he has
been lauded by some as the father of veterinary medicine
as a consequence, critics point to the derivative nature of
his work as evidence that he really doesn't deserve that title,
but the key contribution that he made to animal science
(13:54):
was integrating the most current medical knowledge of his time
with an approach to the care and treatment of animals.
And there is, by the way, still some debate about
whether this is the same Vegetius who also wrote military treatises.
Some will say yes, that's definitely the same person, and
others to think not so much, that it's two separate people.
(14:14):
By the seventh century, China had a well defined veterinary
services system and an established school for training veterinarians. A
book called A Collection of Ways to Care For and
Treat Horses provided standardized information for students and offered information
that combined all these various learnings and treatment therapies that
have been described in earlier texts. And we don't have
(14:37):
a great deal of literature regarding animal care in the
early Middle Ages of Europe, though there was certainly study
of horse physiology and health in Arab occupied Spain beginning
in the seven hundreds. Caring for horses, of course, continued
to be a significant driver for work in veterinary care
around the world for centuries. Sometime prior to the tenth century,
(14:58):
a Sanskrit x titled Complete Ierbatic System for Horses was
written by a person named Sally Jotra, who went on
to produce additional books as well, including In Praise of
Horses and Treatise on the Marks of Horses. A Tibetan
translation of Complete Aerbatic System for Horses also appeared in
the eleventh century, and it was translated into Arabic in
(15:21):
the fourteenth century. Yeah, that particular text became really popular
and was used in a lot of different places. And
another Sanskrit text with an uncertain publication date is the
Four part iur Veda for Elephants, and this treatise described
serious illness, minor ailments, anatomy, surgery and medicines and diet
for well being for elephants. It's a really comprehensive guide
(15:44):
to elephant care, borrowing advice and techniques from earlier centuries
and incorporating it with newer beliefs and observations. And one
of the basic ideas present in all of the text
we've mentioned from India specifically is the importance of preventative care.
Cleanliness of moles and of their food, with warnings against overfeeding,
were commonly promoted as ways to stave off disease. In
(16:07):
the early half of the fourteenth century, an Italian farrier
named Jordana Ruffo wrote a work that was on horse medicine,
and this particular volume built to some degree on the
previous work of Galen, but it was written based on
his extensive work with horses more than anything else. He
rarely made reference to earlier works in this text, instead
providing his own observations. Ruville also issued a lot of
(16:32):
the more old wives tale style of medicine that had
been used prior to this time, and favored a much
more straightforward approach to animal care that are allied on
evidence based conclusions, which is a shocker. It's not really
a shocker. So this was really a big step forward.
He yeah, there were definitely a lot of uh, you know,
(16:54):
kind of mystical style. Uh. There were even some horoscope
based like animal care things that had been going on,
and he was like, no, no, no, just look at
the horse, see what is wrong. Addressed the problem we have.
We've dropped, we've name dropped the podcast saw Bones a
lot um, but they have so many amazing shows that
(17:15):
are about various treatments, largely that came to popularity before
we really had an evidence based system of medicine in
the West. Yeah. As for other parts of the world,
there were veterinarian text in the fourteenth century Memluk period
when the Islamic Empire was in power in large portions
(17:35):
of Africa and Asia, and these even include illustrations of
horses being given medicine through a tube inserted into the
animal's mouth, and the writing that explained this illustration said
that this was an effective way to administer treatments to
resistant animals. Texts of Hippocrates and Galen also circulated through
the Islamic Empire, translated into Arabic, and unlike European animal care,
(17:59):
which focused on verses and live stock, it appears that
in parts of Africa and Asia where those texts were available,
the ideas in them were applied to all kinds of animals,
including horses and livestock, but also cats and dogs, Yeah,
and even birds. I mean they really it was a
much more diversified approach to caring for animals than just
focusing on on the working animals of livestock. Uh Jos
(18:23):
van Gistel, who was a Flemish man whose name I've
probably butchered, who traveled through the Islamic Empire for four
years in the fourteen eighties, actually mentioned a cat shelter
in his writings about Damascus. This shelter was adjacent to
a hospital for the poor, and to the best of
my knowledge and it's it's mentioned in several places that
this is probably the first known cat shelter specifically in
(18:45):
the world, but there's always the possibility there were others
that we just haven't didn't stumble across in our writings.
There were also practitioners of animal medicine who specialized in
things such as horse obstetrics. Since horses were of vide
part of the culture, it makes sense that their care
might be more specialized than the more general medicine practiced
(19:06):
on other animals. Over All, the Islamic Empire had a
fairly comprehensive approach to caring for animals of all kinds,
and books on horse care and anatomy continued to be
produced in Europe during this time as well, and the
movable type printing press meant that such books could be
shared with a wider audience than ever before. Carlo Ruini
of Bologna wrote a two volume examination of equine physiology
(19:29):
titled Anatomy of the Horse Infirmity and Its Remedies. When
he wrote it is still a little bit unclear. It
wasn't published until after his death in fIF but it
was translated and republished throughout the sixteen hundreds. Volume one
of ruin He's in depth work is dedicated to describing
equine anatomy, while volume two focuses on identifying and treating disease.
(19:51):
Much of the science discussed regarding horse ailments is based
on the four humors Coloric, Sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholics. There
was a lot out of work still to be done. Yeah,
again advanced for the time. Uh. And it was one
of those things where these books that were circulating, we're
kind of enabling people to care for their own animals
(20:13):
outside of the being necessarily like veterinarians. In the late
seventeen hundreds, Philippe Etienne la Fosse, the son of a farrier,
wrote a number of books about horse care, featuring colored
plates to illustrate the text, and other writers quickly followed
with their own books about equine health and illness. But
even though there was more and more information being made
(20:34):
available in Europe at the time, there was still no
formalized course of study for animal care, remaining ahead of
Western practices. Asian veterinary practices really expanded by the mid
seventeen hundreds to include standardized care of smaller animals such
as dogs and cats, in addition to the larger livestock species.
(20:54):
And we're about to talk about why and how Europe
finally established formal veterinary training, but before we do, let
pause for a word from one of our sponsors. The
catalyst for veterinary schools in Europe was in fact, illness.
As render pest, scabies, pneumonia, and other ailments became common
(21:17):
enough in their outbreaks is to sometimes be described as plagues,
it became apparent that doctors educated and specializing in animal
care were needed. To that end, the first established college
of veterinary Medicine opened in Leon, France in seventeen sixty one.
It was set up in what had once been a
hotel and then had been converted into a house. Students
(21:39):
from around Europe, which thirty eight of them at all,
were enrolled, went opened. Early courses at the college included dissection, pharmacy, surgery,
and horsemanship, among others, and the school was so successful
that the Leon Veterinary College was made a royal school
by King Louis the fifteen just four years after the
school at Leon, and a second was established in out four,
(22:02):
France in seventeen sixty five to meet demand. Claude bourge Law,
the founder of the veterinary school Leon, had taken something
of a gamble. Ongoing financing of the school was unstable
at best when it opened, and so one of the
ways he proved it's worth was putting his students to work,
using their newly acquired knowledge to address outbreaks of render pest.
(22:24):
After only six months he was able to show quite
clearly the benefits of their work, which is how things
took off so quickly. Yeah, those students were basically like
working actively at the same time they were learning, so
they were really really uh learning on the job and
helping to address problems that were going on in the
area around them. And this success of the French schools
(22:45):
led to the establishment of schools throughout Europe. By the
end of the seventeen seventies, there were veterinary colleges in Dresden, Copenhagen, Hanover,
and Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, Munich and London all had veterinary
schools by the end of the eighteenth century, and from
they are the educational offerings continued to expand on the
European continent. The first veterinary school in North America was
(23:07):
established in Ontario, Canada, in eighteen sixty two, so it
took almost a hundred years before North America got its
own veterinary college. As for the United States, that really
wasn't until after the Revolutionary War that there was enough
density in domesticated animals for people to see animal based
disease events and the need for specialized medicine to address them.
(23:30):
Colonists had managed their own animals up to that point,
but as the new nation began to grow and the
animal population grew along with it, needs changed. Early on,
the low prestige jobs of cow leach and ferrier developed
to see to the needs of cows and livestock in
the case of the cow leach, and horses in the
case of the farrier, but there was no schooling associated
(23:51):
with either job. They were largely based on intuition and guesswork.
In seventeen nine, an outbreak of Texas cattle fever had
moved from the South, where it was normally seen farther
north into both Pennsylvania and Maryland, and this resulted in
the first legislative act connected to animal disease in the
United States. North Carolina's legislature forbade cattle that had passed
(24:13):
through areas with long leaf pine into or through their state.
While it was not yet known that Texas cattle fever
was caused by a protozoan parasite, the connection that ticks
were involved had been figured out, and ticks were known
to thrive in long leaf pine forests, so that is
why if a cattle had been driven through such forests,
(24:34):
they were not allowed in North Carolina. Incidentally, it would
be another century before that protozoan cause of Texas cattle
fever was identified by a pathologist named Theobald Smith. But
as the United States headed into the eighteen hundreds, even
though there were no veterinary colleges in the country, European
educated veterinarians offering care of livestock started to set up practices.
(24:55):
These were primarily in metropolitan areas along East Coast. Because
it was a new industry and was unregulated in the States,
there were plenty of people claiming to be veterinarians who
had no real schooling or credentials to speak of. Yeah,
there are some pretty disturbing stories, uh that I did
not include here, but you know, basically people showing up
(25:17):
and going, yeah, I'm a horse dent does don't pull
your horse's teeth. Um, that really may have had some
practical experience but had no formal training at all. The
New York College of Veterinary Surgeons was established in eighteen
fifty seven, and from then to the early nineteen hundreds,
dozens of schools open throughout the United States, and additional
regulation established more consistency across all colleges for comprehensive training.
(25:42):
Between eighteen sixty six and nineteen thirty four, twenty thousand,
seven hundred and sixty two people graduated from US veterinary colleges.
In eighteen sixty three, the American Veterinary Medical Association formed
after a number of veterinarians had been corresponding with one
another and realized that an official affiliation might be beneficial.
(26:03):
Forty delegates met in New York for the first meeting.
From They were from New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine,
Ohio and Delaware, and just as European livestock being ravaged
by illness led to the birth of the Veterinary College,
outbreaks of disease among animals in the US led to
the establishment of the Bureau of Animal Industry. After decades
(26:25):
of fighting off one episodotic after another, the b AI
was formed in eighteen eighty four with the signing of
the Animal Industry Act by President Chester A. Arthur. Since
anesthesia wasn't used in the treatment of humans until the
mid eighteen hundreds, animals were definitely not getting yet in
the West either. Sedatives had been used for animals to
(26:46):
varying degrees in other parts of the globe, though, many
of the untrained and unethical people who were claiming to
be veterinarians in the United States were undoubtedly causing many
horses and other livestock a good deal of trauma. Because
of all this, it's a clear example of how medical
Charlottanism was a danger to animals as well as two people.
(27:06):
In nineteen o three, the first woman to graduate from
veterinary school in the United States was doctor Mignon Nicholson,
who earned her degree from McKillop Veterinary College in Chicago,
but this didn't exactly open the floodgates to women veterinarians.
In nineteen fifteen, there were a total of four women
who graduated from US veterinary schools and went into practice,
(27:28):
so even twelve years later, only four. In nineteen o four,
China's first Western style veterinary medical school opened, and its
focus was primarily on horse care. All this was a
move toward modernization in quotation marks, traditional Chinese veterinary medicine
was also still quite common. On October four of nineteen seventeen,
(27:50):
the U. S. Army Veterinary Corps was established. This was, not, however,
the first time animal care was included in parts of
the U. S. Military. Farriers had been army personnel as
far back as the late seventeen hundreds. On December one,
Dr Eileen cust became the first woman to graduate from
the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, becoming Great Britain's first
(28:12):
woman veterinarian. She was fifty four at the time and
had been denied the opportunity to sit for her examination
examinations twenty years prior when she actually finished her initial
schooling and veterinary science in Edinburgh. Yeah, she is someone
I'm I would potentially like to do as a topic
on her own leader. But basically she had been working
in the field that twenty years but had never been
(28:34):
allowed to actually take her final exams and graduate veterinary school,
even though she had done all of the coursework. In
ninety nine, I ran across this and it struck me
as kind of fascinating. It was estimated that the cost
of a veterinary education in a German school was around
twelve thousand dollars, a sum that seems paltry by today's standards,
but really was a very huge investment at the time.
(28:57):
During China's Cultural Revolution, which we covered a while back
in a four part series, traditional Chinese veterinary medicine as
well as traditional Chinese medicine for people, were banned. After
the Cultural Revolution. However, many practitioners of both veterinary medicine
and human focused medicine once again turned to traditional methods
to enhance their modern therapies. This approach came to be
(29:19):
called complementary and alternative veterinary medicine or integrated medicine. By
the middle of the twentieth century, veterinary schools were well
established throughout the globe, and while World War Two had
fostered a surge in women working as veterinarians, that dropped
off in the nineteen fifties but then built back up
over time. Today there are roughly an equal number of
(29:41):
women and men in veterinary practice in the United States,
although veterinary schools actually have seventy women's students. As post
World War two leisure lifestyles developed, the place of pets
became a lot more elevated in Western culture, and consequently
there was a significant growth of small animal practices to
care for beloved household pets that really started in the
(30:02):
nineteen fifties, where most veterinarians prior to that time where
large animal caregivers. Things began to shift to the point
where now most veterinary school graduates are likely headed into
small animal practice. In the last five decades, the science
of treating animals has also expanded significantly. Today they are
specialist veterinarians in almost any field you would find for
(30:25):
the treatment of humans, so dental specialist, neurologists, and oncologists
are all available to provide animals with specialized treatment as well.
As a host of other specialty areas of service. Consequently,
it's estimated that Americans will spend sixteen point sixty two
billion dollars that is billion with a B on veterinary
care in twenty seventeen. Yeah, we have come a long way.
(30:48):
It's a it's fascinating to me to think about. Like
I said, when I had that discussion with the vet
that we saw recently, uh how here in the United States,
not everywhere, but certainly for a lot of people. You know,
our pets are very sort of pampered and fussed over
and loved and adored, and so it was sort of
a good reminder to me when she was talking about
(31:09):
how no, no animals there are are there for protection
of their property and territory and that's pretty much it.
So it's a good reminder to me that like not
everyone is is operating under the same circumstances. Yeah. I
read a really fascinating article recently that was about efforts
to make UH veterinary care more available in indigenous communities,
(31:33):
which sometimes have their own UH like indigenous practices for
caring for animals UM and how to find ways to
do that that are simultaneously respectful um, and make sure
that animals are able to get uh like western style
care when it's actually needed. Um. Because as with a
lot of things, there are some places where like the
(31:56):
western style medicine is the thing that's going to fix
the problem um, and times where like the more traditional
practice is going to be completely fine. So uh, that
was fascinating. Also. Yeah, one of the pieces that I
read about veterinary medicine and China talked about the traditional
style of treatments that included things like are both therapies
(32:19):
and acupuncture and other things versus modern medicine and how
in some places, particularly in more rural or less financially
abundant communities, sometimes they relied on the more traditional types
because they were more cost effective, you know, they were
much more affordable to people. But that they are similarly
(32:40):
trying to continue to integrate both traditional and modern medical
practices to kind of create a more holistic approach to
the whole thing, uh and offer options. It's really a
fascinating uh field when you think about that. Like, again,
I think of it as so much of my experience
comes from Western medicine and and it's like, yes, my
(33:02):
cat has a problem, we don't know what's wrong with
his back. Let's get an m r I. But that's
that's not always how everyone thinks, and it's good to
be reminded of that. Um. By the way, my cat's
had an m R I is just fine. Thanks so
(33:22):
much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode
is out of the archive, if you heard an email
address or Facebook U r L or something similar over
the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart
radio dot com. Our old hell stuff works email address
no longer works, and you can find us all over
(33:44):
social media at missed in History and you can subscribe
to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I
heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
i art Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
(34:06):
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Happy Saturday. The National Veterinary School of Leon came up
in our recent episode on the History of Rabies that
first opened in seventeen sixty one and it was the
first college of veterinary Medicine. It was also part of
our Brief History of Veterinary Medicine, which came out on
June one, seen, so we're bringing that one out today
(00:23):
is our Saturday Classic, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You
Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm
Tracy V. Wilson. So, Tracy, I had to run to
(00:47):
the vet recently, UM, and I while I was there
because it was kind of an emergency visit, my regular VET,
who I love and a door and have been with
more than a decade was in surgery so she could
not see us. And we saw another VET at the
practice that I had never met before, and she's fairly
new and she was lovely, and she was telling me
this story about how she had just gotten back from Africa. Um.
(01:09):
She had gone with a group to Malawi where they
have been having really big issues with Raby's outbreaks. And
basically they go and they do rabies vaccinations on literally
thousands and thousands and thousands of dogs. You told me
this number, and it was bind bogglingly huge number, she
told me, as an estimated seventeen thousand, so many. Yeah,
(01:30):
And part of it is that in Malawi, like it's
not so much that everyone's worried about the dogs because
the dogs are not seen as like pets the same
way we have pets here in the United States and
many of the many other places in the world. But
it was because this raby's outbreak had been causing problems
where children were getting bit by rabid dogs, and so
they were trying to address it that way. And she
(01:51):
and I got into this discussion about how animals are
treated much differently and like they don't have the same
kind of approach to veterinary care because they're working animals.
It's culturally just very very different. Uh. And it got
me thinking about veterinary history. So that is what we're
going to cover today, a very brief history of veterinary medicine.
It is not comprehensive by any means, because things were
(02:12):
developing all over the world at different times, uh, and
in different ways, with different cultures. That's what we're talking
about today. There are also lots of indigenous practices that
we don't necessarily have documentation on, but logically we know
they existed correct uh, and there are The problem with
that is that a lot of it, like Tracy said,
is not documented, and what documentation there is is a
(02:35):
little bit hazy and often seen through the eyes of
a completely different culture, so the interpretation is really not
entirely trustworthy. Um. So we're not going to cover everywhere
in the world, but we're getting a pretty good sampling. Um.
A lot of European and US stuff, of course, but
also uh, some stuff that was going on in India
(02:56):
and China and the Middle East and how all of
these different cultures were developing their own means of caring
for animals. And a couple of caveats in addition to
that is that we're not going to delve into veterinary
care in terms of like the specificity of caring for
zoo and aquarium animals. That is a whole other, fascinating
(03:16):
realm of veterinary science, but it really is its own
topic on its own, So we're focusing on care for
animals in this one. That people would keep as working
animals and pets like people. For lack of better phrasing,
because I know not everyone likes the term ownership when
it comes to animals. But for this, animals that would
be owned by people. Uh and we I've debated over
(03:38):
how to set this up in terms of like if
it would be better to go with each individual culture
in their timeline, But what I ended up doing was
going more or less chronologically. There are some overlaps of
where things are developing over hundreds of years where it's
not entirely chronological, but I went that way instead. So
geographically speaking, we're doing a lot of traveling and bouncing
around the world, so buckle up for that. We're going
(03:59):
to start off with ancient times in a History of
Veterinary Medicine from nineteen thirty nine that's in Iowa States
Digital Repository. The opening begins the birth of veterinary art
probably preceded that of human medicine and biological existence. Food
is the primitive requirement. Veterinary medicine sustains life, human medicine
(04:23):
preserves it. An awareness of animal health in ancient times
is even mentioned in the Bible. While the directives of
Moses to his peoples, who inspect animal flesh intended for
eating is about the cleanliness of items to be consumed.
It also indicates that the health of animals was on
people's minds, but even before that time, humans were obviously
(04:45):
considering animal well being. Once any type of animal was domesticated,
the humans who lived alongside those animals would naturally become
aware of illnesses that would have probably gone unnoticed otherwise. Additionally,
keeping animal as together would promote the spread of infectious diseases,
so it was in humans best interests to try to
(05:05):
treat these problems. And while there's some evidence that people
in the Middle East, for example, we're applying treatments that
could be categorized as rudimentary veterinary medicine for their flocks.
As early as nine thousand b C. The earliest known
individual who is labeled as a healer of animals was,
and I'm going to butcher this name because I could
not find a good pronunciation guide for it, was Ulu Galladina,
(05:28):
who lived in Mesopotamia around three thousand BC. During the
same time, there were veterinarians mentioned who served as doctors
of oxen and doctors of donkeys, but none are specifically
called out by name, and there really is not much
information about either of those jobs. Approximately five hundred years later,
writings dealing with the care of horses and cattle started
(05:51):
appearing in China. Traditional Chinese veterinary medicine has been described
as a branch of traditional Chinese medicine, and the two
of them developed concurrently with medical treatments for humans, often
being adapted for use with animals. This included veterinary acupuncture,
although the first Chinese book about treating animals with acupuncture
didn't appear until the seventh century BC. The Aschoona Code
(06:16):
appeared in Mesopotamia around twenty b C, and in it,
rabies is clearly discussed via laws about mad dogs that
made the owners of mad dogs liable if one of
their dogs were to bite and kill someone. Penalties of
payment were clearly established in these laws and around the
same time, but believed to have been written slightly later.
(06:38):
The Code of Hammurabi set rules for how much veterinarians
could charge for their services. The Calhoun Papyri, written during
the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, which ran from twenty forty
to seventeen eighty two, BC included a text on veterinary medicine,
including herbal remedies for treating domestic animals, and as we
(06:58):
mentioned in our episode on cat, throughout history and as
pretty common knowledge, few lines were much loved and even
revered in ancient Egypt, and cats have been found mummified
in much the same way that humans were Vedic literature
dating as far back as fift b C includes descriptions
of protective ointments for cows and horses as well as humans.
(07:19):
These writings also outline the foundations of what would become
general medical knowledge for both humans and animals, and there
is discussion of observing animals behavior when they're sick to
learn more about the potential curative properties of plants, stating quote,
the wild boar knows the herb which will cure it,
as does the mongoose. So they were basically advocating, watch
(07:40):
what animals do when they're sick, and you're going to
find plants that might help humans too. I'm just gonna
take a moment to say, don't don't rely on that
in the wild. No, no, no, they were advocating that.
Then today I say go to a doctor. Yeah, well,
there are definitely things that animals are fine eating that
will kill humans did. Many Vedic texts were translated into Tibetan, Arabic,
(08:05):
and Persian, and there are legends incorporated into the included
discussions of animal care, so God's revealed to the to
the people how to care for horses and elephants, for example.
Later Hippocrates wrote of animal health around four hundred BC.
He described hydro thorax that's an accumulation of water or
fluid on the lungs in livestock animals such as sheep, pigs,
(08:28):
and oxen, and he also described a cow having a
dislocated hip. Livestock ailments were also described in the fourth
century BC, with that being by Aristotle. This writing features
a detailed description of an ailment in dogs that we
now recognize as being an account of rabies. And rabies,
of course, is not confined to dogs, but in Aristotle's
(08:49):
writing he associated with dogs. Dogs are probably the animal
that humans are most likely to be having contact with,
especially in earlier injuries that were likely to carry rabies. Yeah.
Horse wellness, including descriptions on proper care, was discussed by
Athenian soldier Xenophon in his book on horsemanship, and in
(09:12):
it he states quote and just as with human beings,
so with the horse. All diseases are more curable at
their commencement than after they have become chronic or been
wrongly treated. He also mentioned that horses could have too
much blood, which would require a veterinary doctor to address.
But these were early times. We now know you can't
have too much blood. UH. A lot of his advice,
(09:33):
though it was interesting, was preventative. He really really advocated
bolstering the horse's strength and health to stave off any issues. Meanwhile,
in India, King Ashoka opened the first animal hospital known
in the world around to fifty BC. He also mandated
herbal medicine availability for both people and animals, and provided
(09:54):
for the cultivation of metal medically beneficial plants and places
that lacked them. In Rome, both Virgil, writing in the
first century b C. And Pliny the Elder writing in
the first century made mention in their written work of
ailments that took out large numbers of animals, and Columella,
writing around the same time as Pliny the Elder this
(10:15):
was around UH the year fifty five, wrote a book
on animal husbandry that discussed disease spread and the necessity
of isolating sick animals to curtail it, stating the diseased
must be separated from the sound that not so much
as one may come among them, which may with the contagion,
affect the rest. Next up, we'll talk about Galen and
(10:37):
the advances made in our knowledge of animal physiology while
trying to study up on human physiology. But first we
will pause for a word from a sponsor. Galen, who
lived in the second century, is known primarily as a
physician rather than a veterinarian. But while he is doing
(11:00):
the work that would eventually give him his historical standing
in human medicine, he also studied animals, often dissecting them
as part of his study of anatomy, and this was
primarily due to the taboo over dissection of human corpses.
Many of the discoveries he made regarding basic physiology applied
to many species, including animals, and those discoveries included the
(11:21):
carriage of blood by arteries, for example, But it also
meant that he landed at conclusions that were really off base,
such as his writing about the uterus, which is based
on dogs and consequently has some errors. Also Just in
case you didn't know, the word husbandry doesn't refer specifically
to breeding. Sometimes people use it that way, but it
(11:42):
really means a general care of animals, which can include breathing,
breeding for healthy lines. One of my favorite things that
includes his husbandry behaviors that you teach animals to make
easier treat them. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things.
Uh many moons ago. I used to volunteer or at
the Georgia Aquarium in their animal husbandry division, and I
(12:03):
would say that and people would be like, do you
make animals mate? And I was like, no, that's not
what a husbandry means, Like we're not we're not actually
like marrying them. There were very weird discussions that would
sometimes happen. Um. I feel like that is a mistake
people often make when they are children or learning language. Yeah,
(12:26):
or if you've never really like looked into, you know,
animal care beyond just like I have a dog and
if he didn't take to the vet, you may not
know that that's what that term means. There's no shame
in it. It just was charming. The Sanskrit text known
as the artist Sastra, written and revised over the course
of the second century BC through the third century is
(12:47):
a political treatise, but it also includes the mention of
a military practice of having a veterinarian travel with armies
to tend to tired, injured, elderly, and sick animals. Circa
the third century Chinese book titled pocket Book of Emergency
Therapies spelled out how to treat horses for a number
of ailments, including sunstroke, which was treated by blood letting.
(13:11):
Stop draining horses. People like, they don't have too much blood,
but they didn't know, and they were doing the best
they could with what the knowledge they had. So I
was more thinking. It is currently about eighty seven degrees
in the room I'm recording in. Please do not drain
my blood. Maybe you would feel cooler. Writing in the
(13:31):
fifth century, Vegetius wrote a treatise on veterinary medicine. Again, this,
like much of what we've been discussing up to this point,
is focused on horses and livestock, and while he has
been lauded by some as the father of veterinary medicine
as a consequence, critics point to the derivative nature of
his work as evidence that he really doesn't deserve that title,
but the key contribution that he made to animal science
(13:54):
was integrating the most current medical knowledge of his time
with an approach to the care and treatment of animals.
And there is, by the way, still some debate about
whether this is the same Vegetius who also wrote military treatises.
Some will say yes, that's definitely the same person, and
others to think not so much, that it's two separate people.
(14:14):
By the seventh century, China had a well defined veterinary
services system and an established school for training veterinarians. A
book called A Collection of Ways to Care For and
Treat Horses provided standardized information for students and offered information
that combined all these various learnings and treatment therapies that
have been described in earlier texts. And we don't have
(14:37):
a great deal of literature regarding animal care in the
early Middle Ages of Europe, though there was certainly study
of horse physiology and health in Arab occupied Spain beginning
in the seven hundreds. Caring for horses, of course, continued
to be a significant driver for work in veterinary care
around the world for centuries. Sometime prior to the tenth century,
(14:58):
a Sanskrit x titled Complete Ierbatic System for Horses was
written by a person named Sally Jotra, who went on
to produce additional books as well, including In Praise of
Horses and Treatise on the Marks of Horses. A Tibetan
translation of Complete Aerbatic System for Horses also appeared in
the eleventh century, and it was translated into Arabic in
(15:21):
the fourteenth century. Yeah, that particular text became really popular
and was used in a lot of different places. And
another Sanskrit text with an uncertain publication date is the
Four part iur Veda for Elephants, and this treatise described
serious illness, minor ailments, anatomy, surgery and medicines and diet
for well being for elephants. It's a really comprehensive guide
(15:44):
to elephant care, borrowing advice and techniques from earlier centuries
and incorporating it with newer beliefs and observations. And one
of the basic ideas present in all of the text
we've mentioned from India specifically is the importance of preventative care.
Cleanliness of moles and of their food, with warnings against overfeeding,
were commonly promoted as ways to stave off disease. In
(16:07):
the early half of the fourteenth century, an Italian farrier
named Jordana Ruffo wrote a work that was on horse medicine,
and this particular volume built to some degree on the
previous work of Galen, but it was written based on
his extensive work with horses more than anything else. He
rarely made reference to earlier works in this text, instead
providing his own observations. Ruville also issued a lot of
(16:32):
the more old wives tale style of medicine that had
been used prior to this time, and favored a much
more straightforward approach to animal care that are allied on
evidence based conclusions, which is a shocker. It's not really
a shocker. So this was really a big step forward.
He yeah, there were definitely a lot of uh, you know,
(16:54):
kind of mystical style. Uh. There were even some horoscope
based like animal care things that had been going on,
and he was like, no, no, no, just look at
the horse, see what is wrong. Addressed the problem we have.
We've dropped, we've name dropped the podcast saw Bones a
lot um, but they have so many amazing shows that
(17:15):
are about various treatments, largely that came to popularity before
we really had an evidence based system of medicine in
the West. Yeah. As for other parts of the world,
there were veterinarian text in the fourteenth century Memluk period
when the Islamic Empire was in power in large portions
(17:35):
of Africa and Asia, and these even include illustrations of
horses being given medicine through a tube inserted into the
animal's mouth, and the writing that explained this illustration said
that this was an effective way to administer treatments to
resistant animals. Texts of Hippocrates and Galen also circulated through
the Islamic Empire, translated into Arabic, and unlike European animal care,
(17:59):
which focused on verses and live stock, it appears that
in parts of Africa and Asia where those texts were available,
the ideas in them were applied to all kinds of animals,
including horses and livestock, but also cats and dogs, Yeah,
and even birds. I mean they really it was a
much more diversified approach to caring for animals than just
focusing on on the working animals of livestock. Uh Jos
(18:23):
van Gistel, who was a Flemish man whose name I've
probably butchered, who traveled through the Islamic Empire for four
years in the fourteen eighties, actually mentioned a cat shelter
in his writings about Damascus. This shelter was adjacent to
a hospital for the poor, and to the best of
my knowledge and it's it's mentioned in several places that
this is probably the first known cat shelter specifically in
(18:45):
the world, but there's always the possibility there were others
that we just haven't didn't stumble across in our writings.
There were also practitioners of animal medicine who specialized in
things such as horse obstetrics. Since horses were of vide
part of the culture, it makes sense that their care
might be more specialized than the more general medicine practiced
(19:06):
on other animals. Over All, the Islamic Empire had a
fairly comprehensive approach to caring for animals of all kinds,
and books on horse care and anatomy continued to be
produced in Europe during this time as well, and the
movable type printing press meant that such books could be
shared with a wider audience than ever before. Carlo Ruini
of Bologna wrote a two volume examination of equine physiology
(19:29):
titled Anatomy of the Horse Infirmity and Its Remedies. When
he wrote it is still a little bit unclear. It
wasn't published until after his death in fIF but it
was translated and republished throughout the sixteen hundreds. Volume one
of ruin He's in depth work is dedicated to describing
equine anatomy, while volume two focuses on identifying and treating disease.
(19:51):
Much of the science discussed regarding horse ailments is based
on the four humors Coloric, Sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholics. There
was a lot out of work still to be done. Yeah,
again advanced for the time. Uh. And it was one
of those things where these books that were circulating, we're
kind of enabling people to care for their own animals
(20:13):
outside of the being necessarily like veterinarians. In the late
seventeen hundreds, Philippe Etienne la Fosse, the son of a farrier,
wrote a number of books about horse care, featuring colored
plates to illustrate the text, and other writers quickly followed
with their own books about equine health and illness. But
even though there was more and more information being made
(20:34):
available in Europe at the time, there was still no
formalized course of study for animal care, remaining ahead of
Western practices. Asian veterinary practices really expanded by the mid
seventeen hundreds to include standardized care of smaller animals such
as dogs and cats, in addition to the larger livestock species.
(20:54):
And we're about to talk about why and how Europe
finally established formal veterinary training, but before we do, let
pause for a word from one of our sponsors. The
catalyst for veterinary schools in Europe was in fact, illness.
As render pest, scabies, pneumonia, and other ailments became common
(21:17):
enough in their outbreaks is to sometimes be described as plagues,
it became apparent that doctors educated and specializing in animal
care were needed. To that end, the first established college
of veterinary Medicine opened in Leon, France in seventeen sixty one.
It was set up in what had once been a
hotel and then had been converted into a house. Students
(21:39):
from around Europe, which thirty eight of them at all,
were enrolled, went opened. Early courses at the college included dissection, pharmacy, surgery,
and horsemanship, among others, and the school was so successful
that the Leon Veterinary College was made a royal school
by King Louis the fifteen just four years after the
school at Leon, and a second was established in out four,
(22:02):
France in seventeen sixty five to meet demand. Claude bourge Law,
the founder of the veterinary school Leon, had taken something
of a gamble. Ongoing financing of the school was unstable
at best when it opened, and so one of the
ways he proved it's worth was putting his students to work,
using their newly acquired knowledge to address outbreaks of render pest.
(22:24):
After only six months he was able to show quite
clearly the benefits of their work, which is how things
took off so quickly. Yeah, those students were basically like
working actively at the same time they were learning, so
they were really really uh learning on the job and
helping to address problems that were going on in the
area around them. And this success of the French schools
(22:45):
led to the establishment of schools throughout Europe. By the
end of the seventeen seventies, there were veterinary colleges in Dresden, Copenhagen, Hanover,
and Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, Munich and London all had veterinary
schools by the end of the eighteenth century, and from
they are the educational offerings continued to expand on the
European continent. The first veterinary school in North America was
(23:07):
established in Ontario, Canada, in eighteen sixty two, so it
took almost a hundred years before North America got its
own veterinary college. As for the United States, that really
wasn't until after the Revolutionary War that there was enough
density in domesticated animals for people to see animal based
disease events and the need for specialized medicine to address them.
(23:30):
Colonists had managed their own animals up to that point,
but as the new nation began to grow and the
animal population grew along with it, needs changed. Early on,
the low prestige jobs of cow leach and ferrier developed
to see to the needs of cows and livestock in
the case of the cow leach, and horses in the
case of the farrier, but there was no schooling associated
(23:51):
with either job. They were largely based on intuition and guesswork.
In seventeen nine, an outbreak of Texas cattle fever had
moved from the South, where it was normally seen farther
north into both Pennsylvania and Maryland, and this resulted in
the first legislative act connected to animal disease in the
United States. North Carolina's legislature forbade cattle that had passed
(24:13):
through areas with long leaf pine into or through their state.
While it was not yet known that Texas cattle fever
was caused by a protozoan parasite, the connection that ticks
were involved had been figured out, and ticks were known
to thrive in long leaf pine forests, so that is
why if a cattle had been driven through such forests,
(24:34):
they were not allowed in North Carolina. Incidentally, it would
be another century before that protozoan cause of Texas cattle
fever was identified by a pathologist named Theobald Smith. But
as the United States headed into the eighteen hundreds, even
though there were no veterinary colleges in the country, European
educated veterinarians offering care of livestock started to set up practices.
(24:55):
These were primarily in metropolitan areas along East Coast. Because
it was a new industry and was unregulated in the States,
there were plenty of people claiming to be veterinarians who
had no real schooling or credentials to speak of. Yeah,
there are some pretty disturbing stories, uh that I did
not include here, but you know, basically people showing up
(25:17):
and going, yeah, I'm a horse dent does don't pull
your horse's teeth. Um, that really may have had some
practical experience but had no formal training at all. The
New York College of Veterinary Surgeons was established in eighteen
fifty seven, and from then to the early nineteen hundreds,
dozens of schools open throughout the United States, and additional
regulation established more consistency across all colleges for comprehensive training.
(25:42):
Between eighteen sixty six and nineteen thirty four, twenty thousand,
seven hundred and sixty two people graduated from US veterinary colleges.
In eighteen sixty three, the American Veterinary Medical Association formed
after a number of veterinarians had been corresponding with one
another and realized that an official affiliation might be beneficial.
(26:03):
Forty delegates met in New York for the first meeting.
From They were from New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine,
Ohio and Delaware, and just as European livestock being ravaged
by illness led to the birth of the Veterinary College,
outbreaks of disease among animals in the US led to
the establishment of the Bureau of Animal Industry. After decades
(26:25):
of fighting off one episodotic after another, the b AI
was formed in eighteen eighty four with the signing of
the Animal Industry Act by President Chester A. Arthur. Since
anesthesia wasn't used in the treatment of humans until the
mid eighteen hundreds, animals were definitely not getting yet in
the West either. Sedatives had been used for animals to
(26:46):
varying degrees in other parts of the globe, though, many
of the untrained and unethical people who were claiming to
be veterinarians in the United States were undoubtedly causing many
horses and other livestock a good deal of trauma. Because
of all this, it's a clear example of how medical
Charlottanism was a danger to animals as well as two people.
(27:06):
In nineteen o three, the first woman to graduate from
veterinary school in the United States was doctor Mignon Nicholson,
who earned her degree from McKillop Veterinary College in Chicago,
but this didn't exactly open the floodgates to women veterinarians.
In nineteen fifteen, there were a total of four women
who graduated from US veterinary schools and went into practice,
(27:28):
so even twelve years later, only four. In nineteen o four,
China's first Western style veterinary medical school opened, and its
focus was primarily on horse care. All this was a
move toward modernization in quotation marks, traditional Chinese veterinary medicine
was also still quite common. On October four of nineteen seventeen,
(27:50):
the U. S. Army Veterinary Corps was established. This was, not, however,
the first time animal care was included in parts of
the U. S. Military. Farriers had been army personnel as
far back as the late seventeen hundreds. On December one,
Dr Eileen cust became the first woman to graduate from
the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, becoming Great Britain's first
(28:12):
woman veterinarian. She was fifty four at the time and
had been denied the opportunity to sit for her examination
examinations twenty years prior when she actually finished her initial
schooling and veterinary science in Edinburgh. Yeah, she is someone
I'm I would potentially like to do as a topic
on her own leader. But basically she had been working
in the field that twenty years but had never been
(28:34):
allowed to actually take her final exams and graduate veterinary school,
even though she had done all of the coursework. In
ninety nine, I ran across this and it struck me
as kind of fascinating. It was estimated that the cost
of a veterinary education in a German school was around
twelve thousand dollars, a sum that seems paltry by today's standards,
but really was a very huge investment at the time.
(28:57):
During China's Cultural Revolution, which we covered a while back
in a four part series, traditional Chinese veterinary medicine as
well as traditional Chinese medicine for people, were banned. After
the Cultural Revolution. However, many practitioners of both veterinary medicine
and human focused medicine once again turned to traditional methods
to enhance their modern therapies. This approach came to be
(29:19):
called complementary and alternative veterinary medicine or integrated medicine. By
the middle of the twentieth century, veterinary schools were well
established throughout the globe, and while World War Two had
fostered a surge in women working as veterinarians, that dropped
off in the nineteen fifties but then built back up
over time. Today there are roughly an equal number of
(29:41):
women and men in veterinary practice in the United States,
although veterinary schools actually have seventy women's students. As post
World War two leisure lifestyles developed, the place of pets
became a lot more elevated in Western culture, and consequently
there was a significant growth of small animal practices to
care for beloved household pets that really started in the
(30:02):
nineteen fifties, where most veterinarians prior to that time where
large animal caregivers. Things began to shift to the point
where now most veterinary school graduates are likely headed into
small animal practice. In the last five decades, the science
of treating animals has also expanded significantly. Today they are
specialist veterinarians in almost any field you would find for
(30:25):
the treatment of humans, so dental specialist, neurologists, and oncologists
are all available to provide animals with specialized treatment as well.
As a host of other specialty areas of service. Consequently,
it's estimated that Americans will spend sixteen point sixty two
billion dollars that is billion with a B on veterinary
care in twenty seventeen. Yeah, we have come a long way.
(30:48):
It's a it's fascinating to me to think about. Like
I said, when I had that discussion with the vet
that we saw recently, uh how here in the United States,
not everywhere, but certainly for a lot of people. You know,
our pets are very sort of pampered and fussed over
and loved and adored, and so it was sort of
a good reminder to me when she was talking about
(31:09):
how no, no animals there are are there for protection
of their property and territory and that's pretty much it.
So it's a good reminder to me that like not
everyone is is operating under the same circumstances. Yeah. I
read a really fascinating article recently that was about efforts
to make UH veterinary care more available in indigenous communities,
(31:33):
which sometimes have their own UH like indigenous practices for
caring for animals UM and how to find ways to
do that that are simultaneously respectful um, and make sure
that animals are able to get uh like western style
care when it's actually needed. Um. Because as with a
lot of things, there are some places where like the
(31:56):
western style medicine is the thing that's going to fix
the problem um, and times where like the more traditional
practice is going to be completely fine. So uh, that
was fascinating. Also. Yeah, one of the pieces that I
read about veterinary medicine and China talked about the traditional
style of treatments that included things like are both therapies
(32:19):
and acupuncture and other things versus modern medicine and how
in some places, particularly in more rural or less financially
abundant communities, sometimes they relied on the more traditional types
because they were more cost effective, you know, they were
much more affordable to people. But that they are similarly
(32:40):
trying to continue to integrate both traditional and modern medical
practices to kind of create a more holistic approach to
the whole thing, uh and offer options. It's really a
fascinating uh field when you think about that. Like, again,
I think of it as so much of my experience
comes from Western medicine and and it's like, yes, my
(33:02):
cat has a problem, we don't know what's wrong with
his back. Let's get an m r I. But that's
that's not always how everyone thinks, and it's good to
be reminded of that. Um. By the way, my cat's
had an m R I is just fine. Thanks so
(33:22):
much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode
is out of the archive, if you heard an email
address or Facebook U r L or something similar over
the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart
radio dot com. Our old hell stuff works email address
no longer works, and you can find us all over
(33:44):
social media at missed in History and you can subscribe
to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I
heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
i art Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
(34:06):
you listen to your favorite shows. H
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