A Brief History of Veterinary Medicine

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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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly from and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, Tracy,
I had to run to the vet recently, UM, and

(00:23):
I while I was there because it was kind of
an emergency visit, my regular vet, who I love in
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. She had gone
with a group to Malawi where they have been having

(00:45):
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. It
was estimated seventeen thousands, so many. Yeah, And part of
it is that in Malawi, like it's not so much

(01:06):
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 and I got
into this discussion about how animals are treated much differently,

(01:27):
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 developing all over
the world at different times, uh and in different ways

(01:49):
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 her
wrecked 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 little bit hazy
and often seen through the eyes of a completely different culture.

(02:12):
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 and China, in
the Middle East and how all of these different cultures

(02:32):
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 realm of veterinary science,
but it really is its own topic on its own.

(02:52):
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 how to set this up
in terms of like if it would be better to

(03:13):
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 to start off with ancient times.

(03:34):
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 preserves it. An awareness of animal

(03:58):
health in ancient times is even mentioned in the Bible.
While the directives of Moses to his people 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 considering animal well being. Once any type

(04:21):
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 animals together would promote
the spread of infectious diseases, so it was in humans
best interests to try to treat these problems. And while
there's some evidence that people in the Middle East, for example,

(04:43):
were 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 er Lu Gala Dinner, who lived in Mesopotamia around
three thousand BC. During the same time, there were veterinarians

(05:06):
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 appearing in China. Traditional Chinese
veterinary medicine has been described as a branch of traditional

(05:29):
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 Ashina Code appeared in Mesopotamia around twenty three b C,

(05:53):
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, the Code of Hammurabi set rules for how
much veterinarians could charge for their services. The Calhoun Papyri,

(06:17):
written during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, which ran from
twenty to seventeen eighty two BC, included a text on
veterinary medicine, including herbal remedies for treating domestic animals, and
as we mentioned in our episode on cats, throughout history
and as pretty common knowledge, few lines were much loved
and even revered in ancient Egypt, and cats have been

(06:40):
found mummified in much the same way that humans were
Vedic literature dating as far back as fifteen hundred BC
includes descriptions of protective ointments for cows and horses as
well as humans. 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

(07:02):
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
what animals do when they're sick, and you're gonna 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

(07:25):
today I say, go to a doctor. Yeah, well, there
are definitely things that animals are fine eating that will
kill humans. The many Vedic texts were translated into Tibetan, Arabic,
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.

(07:49):
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,
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

(08:12):
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 that in Aristotle's
writing he associated with dogs. Dogs are probably the animal
that humans are most likely to be having contact with,
especially in earlier centuries, that were likely to carry rabies. Yeah.

(08:36):
Horse wellness, including descriptions on proper care, was discussed by
Athenian soldier Xenophon in his book on Horsemanship, and in
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

(08:57):
much blood, which would require a veterinary doctor or to address.
But these were early times. We now know you can't
have too much blood. Uh. A lot of his advice,
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

(09:19):
in the world around to fifty b C. He also
mandated herbal medicine availability for both people and animals, and
provided 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

(09:41):
of ailments that took out large numbers of animals, and Columella,
writing around the same time as Pliny the Elder this
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 separate, rated from the sound, that not so

(10:01):
much as one may come among them, which may with
the contagion, affect the rest. Next up, we'll talk about
Galen and 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,

(10:27):
who lived in the second century, is known primarily as
a physician rather than a veterinarian, but while he was
doing 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

(10:50):
to many species, including animals, and those discoveries included the
carriage of blood by arteries, for example, But it also
meant that he landed at conclusions that were really off base,
such as just 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

(11:13):
to breeding. Sometimes people use it that way, but it
really means a general care of animals, which can include breathing,
breeding for healthy lines. One of my favorite things that
includes is 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 at the
Georgia Aquarium in their animal husbandry division, and I would

(11:36):
say that and people would be like, do you make
animals mate? And I was like, no, that's not what
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, if you've

(12:00):
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 sanscrit text known as the artist Shastra,
written and revised over the course of the second century
BC through the third century, is a political treatise, but

(12:21):
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, a Chinese book
titled pocket Book of Emergency Therapies spelled out how to
treat horses for a number of ailments, including sunstroke, which

(12:42):
was treated by blood living. Stop draining horses people if
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

(13:03):
would feel cooler. Writing in the 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

(13:24):
key contribution that he made to animal science 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 just two separate people.

(13:47):
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

(14:10):
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,

(14:31):
a Sanskrit text titled Complete Ierbatic System for Horses was
written by a person named Sally Kotra, 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 Ierbatic System for Horses also appeared in
eleventh century, and it was translated into Arabic in the

(14:54):
fourteenth century. Yeah that particular text became really popular and
was used the Law of Different Places. And another Sanskrit
text with an uncertain publication date is the four part
ir 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 to elephant care,

(15:18):
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 texts we've mentioned from
India specifically is the importance of preventative care. Cleanliness of
animals and of their food, with warnings against overfeeding, were
commonly promoted as ways to stave off disease. In the

(15:40):
early half of the fourteenth century, an Italian farrier named
Jordana Rufo 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

(16:00):
his own observations. Also issued a lot of 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

(16:20):
this was really a big step forward. Yeah, there were
definitely a lot of uh, you know, kind of mystical
style U. 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

(16:42):
podcast saw Bones a lot um, but they have so
many amazing shows that 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 texts in the

(17:03):
fourteenth century Memlok period when the Islamic Empire was in
power in large portions 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

(17:24):
Galen also circulated through the Islamic Empire, translated into Arabic,
and unlike European animal care, which focused on horses and livestock,
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

(17:46):
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 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.

(18:07):
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 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.

(18:31):
Since horses were a vital part of the culture, it
makes sense that their care might be more specialized than
the more general medicine practiced 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

(18:54):
that such books could be shared with a wider audience
than ever before. Carlo Ruini of Bologna wrote a volume
examination of equine physiology 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 fift but it was translated and republished throughout the

(19:14):
sixteen hundreds. Volume one of ruin He's in depth of
work is dedicated to describing equine anatomy, while volume two
focuses on identifying and treating disease. Much of the science
discussed regarding horse ailments is based on the four humors caloric, sanguine, phlegmatic,
and melancholics. There was a lot of work still to

(19:34):
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 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

(19:55):
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 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

(20:18):
by the mid seventeen hundreds to include standardized care of
smaller animals such as dogs and cats, in addition to
the larger livestock species. And we're about to talk about
why and how Europe finally established formal veterinary training, but
before we do, let's pause for a word from one
of our sponsors. The catalyst for veterinary schools in Europe

(20:44):
was in fact illness. As render pest, scabies, pneumonia, and
other ailments became common 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

(21:07):
what had once been a hotel and then had been
converted into a house. Students from around Europe, which thirty
eight of them at all, were enrolled when opened. Early
courses at the college included bisection, pharmacy, surgery, and horsemanship,
among others, and the school was so successful that the
Leon Veterinary College was made a royal school by King

(21:28):
Louis the fifteenth. Just four years after the school at
Leon opened, A second was established in out Four, France,
in seventeen sixty five to meet demand. Claude bourge Law,
the founder of the veterinary school at Leon, had taken
something of a gamble. Ongoing financing of the school was
unstable at best when it opened, and so One of

(21:49):
the ways he proved it's worth was putting his students
to work using their newly acquired knowledge to address outbreaks
of render pest. After only six months, he was able
to show quite clear only 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

(22:11):
on the job and helping to address problems that were
going on in the area around them. And this success
of the French schools 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 there the educational offerings continued

(22:34):
to expand on the European continent. The first veterinary school
in North America was 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

(22:56):
to see animal based disease events and the knee for
specialized medicine to address them. 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

(23:17):
cows and livestock in the case of the cow leach,
and horses in the case of the farrier, but there
was no schooling associated with either job. They were largely
based on intuition and guesswork. In sevent 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

(23:40):
animal disease in the United States. North Carolina's legislature forbade
cattle that had passed 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,

(24:03):
so that is why if cattle had been driven through
such forests, 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

(24:27):
up practices. 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

(24:47):
not include here, but you know, basically people showing up
and go, 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. An additional

(25:08):
regulation established more consistency across all colleges for comprehensive training.
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

(25:31):
another and realized that an official affiliation might be beneficial.
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

(25:53):
establishment of the Bureau of Animal Industry. After decades of
fighting off one episodic after an another, the b a
I 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

(26:15):
in the West either. Sedatives had been used for animals
to 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

(26:37):
to people. 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

(26:59):
into this 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

(27:21):
of nineteen seventeen, 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, nine, Dr Eleen Cust became the first
woman to graduate from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons,

(27:43):
becoming Great Britain's first 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 some and I I would potentially like to
do as a topic on her own leader. But basically

(28:04):
she had been working in the field that twenty years
but had never been allowed to actually take her final
exams and graduate veterinary school, even though she had done
all of the coursework. In nine 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

(28:24):
that seems paltry by today's standards, but really was a
very huge investment at the time. 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

(28:47):
again turned to traditional methods to enhance their modern therapies.
This approach came to be called complementary and alternative veterinary
medicine or integrated medicine. By the middle of the twentieth century,
veterinary schools were well established throughout the globe, while World
War Two had fostered a surge in women working as
veterinarians that dropped off in the nineteen fifties but then

(29:09):
built back up over time. Today, there are roughly an
equal number of women and men in veterinary practice in
the United States, although veterinary schools actually have sev 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

(29:31):
practices to care for beloved household pets. That really started
in the 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

(29:54):
they are specialist veterinarians in almost any field you would
find for the treatment of humans. So dental specialists, 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 a billion with a B on

(30:16):
veterinary care in twenty seventeen. Yeah, we have come a
long way. 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

(30:36):
fussed over and loved and adored, and so it was
sort of a good reminder to me when she was
talking about how no know 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

(30:58):
efforts to make uh veterinary care more available in indigenous communities,
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

(31:21):
care when it's actually needed um. Because as with a
lot of things, there are some places where like the
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

(31:43):
read about veterinary medicine and China talked about the traditional
style of treatments that included things like her both therapies
and acupuncture and other things versus modern medicine. And how
in some places, particularly in more rural or US financially
abundant communities, sometimes they relied on the more traditional types

(32:06):
because they were more cost effective, you know, they were
much more affordable to people. But that they are similarly
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,

(32:28):
I think of it as so much of my experience
comes from Western medicine, and it's like, yes, my cat
has a problem. We don't know what's wrong with his back,
let's get an m R I. But but that's that's
not always how everyone thinks, and it's good to be
reminded of that. Um by the way, my cats had
an m R I is just fine. I won't read

(32:50):
a listener mail today, but I have a thing. It's
kind of a repeat offender. And I say that with
only love. It's not offensive at all. It is from
our listener, Emmanuel, who I have talked about before, because
she has sent us several amazing parcels of um, fantastic
French fashion periodicals from the past. And she sent another

(33:13):
parcel and I got it today when I got to work.
So one of the things that was in this is
actually really really fascinating. It is and she blessed her
heart did uh And I mean not not in the
catty southern way, but in a genuine bless her heart
She's amazing way. Um. She did some leg work on
figuring out what this one particular little gem was. She

(33:37):
found this tiny children's literature book that is from eighteen
sixty seven, so it's not fashion related, but it is
really really fascinating. It's beautifully illustrated. There are color illustrations.
They're really really cute. It's not very common to find

(33:58):
illustrated books that old from that period, so not fashion,
but really amazing. Emmanuel, I feel like I owe you greatly. Um,
you have have gifted us so many wonderful things. She
also maybe has included some nine twenties era la modes
for Tracy to look at, since Tracy loves that period
so much. So when you were next in the office,
we can all the moment getting together, so thank you

(34:21):
for that. If you would like to write to us,
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(34:42):
interested in in the search bar, including veterinary medicine, and
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(35:04):
so you have one stop historical shopping. You can also
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(35:29):
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