The History of Veterinary Medicine part three

The photo is of the last new graduate I employed hard at work in my clinic.

Part Three – The golden age.

I am going to be more personal in the description of my third age of veterinary medicine as I lived through it myself. I was born in 1950 and my father was a vet and in those days we lived in a house which was part veterinary surgery and part living accommodation so when I was very young I had ample opportunity to observe the comings and goings in the surgery. Most of the day the vets went out on visits to horses and farm animals and at that time very few small animals were treated. All the vets were male in those days, bright young men in tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows, who as likely as not smelt of tobacco smoke as well as a faint aroma of the last animal they had treated.

To my young eyes, they all looked the same to me .. clones. The 1950s were however a great period of change, antibiotics and other drugs were coming into general use in the veterinary field and new surgical procedures were being developed, these bright young men were busily curing diseases which a decade back would have been incurable.

In the late 1960′s an event happened in our house which was to set the future trend in veterinary medicine. My father banged the dining room table with his fist and and gloomily said ” The farmers will never accept her, she will never last a minute ” he was talking of Linda my father’s first woman assistant. Looking back on it at that time it must have been difficult to get any veterinary employees and my father’s partners probably took her on as she was the only vet they could find. But the farmers did take to her and probably because being a woman she always had something to prove in a man’s world she turned out to be an excellent veterinary surgeon.
In the 1960′s dogs cats and other small pets started to appear to be treated at the regular surgeries which more and more vets were starting to hold, the mixed practice was being born. It was around this time that my father’s practice got its first x-ray machine and a proper anaesthetic machine, veterinary medicine was starting to look like human medicine.

Something else happened around this time which was to have a great impact on veterinary medicine, a certain Alf Wight adopted the pen name James Herriot and started to write. His books were a great success, the books became films and the films became a television series. A generation of young people including myself became motivated to study and become vets and James single handedly raised the profile of the veterinary profession world wide and raised also the public expectation of veterinary services in general. I particularly liked the Tristan Farnon character, always in mischief, always playing tricks, liked the ladies, and liked his drink, he reminded me of the young vets about my father’s practice at the time and their exploits when off duty, fine role models for a young lad!

The 1970s were a great time for me as I managed after a struggle to get a place at Glasgow University to study veterinary medicine and follow in the footsteps of both my father and Alf Wight. At this time most people were still working in large animal practices and mixed practices, I still had not seen a computer, an ECG machine or an ultrasound scanner nor did I until after I qualified.

In the 1983 I established my own practice in South Woodham Ferrers, Essex, UK and  the 1980s and 1990s were again a period of rapid change, I embraced technology as did the other practices in the area, computer systems, ultrasound scanners, automated laboratory machines, the internet , I felt at the cutting edge. Other changes were taking place though, large animal practices started to decline as agriculture also went into decline and more and more small animal practices sprang up. More and more women were coming into the profession although I had mainly male associates, also veterinary nurses were starting to make their presence felt.

And that brings me into the 21st century, referral centers are springing up with access to MRI scanners and other high tech equipment which makes my innovations of the 1980s look puny! Another change has turned full circle though, I was before I left the UK at a further education meeting and found to my surprise that I was the only male vet there. I was surrounded by earnest looking young women veterinary surgeons who despite the fact that they almost all work in small animal practice were dressed as if they were about to go for a days hill walking. To my now older eyes they all looked the same to me .. clones .. Linda will laugh if she reads this article on the internet! I wonder what the future holds for the profession now?

Go to the beginning of this series.

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This entry was posted on July 25, 2008 at 7:02 am and is filed under History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.