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The town of Lyons from an old print.

Part Two – Development, discovery and carnage.

The start of my Period of Development is when the worlds first veterinary school was opened in Lyon France in 1762, a Mr Claude Bourgelat who was director of the Académie Royale d’Équitation in Lyon got permission from the then king to open an establishment in which the principles and methods of curing livestock could be taught. The reputation of this school soon spread and students from all over Europe attended, these students in time became the leading lights of veterinary science when they returned to their own countries. A second school was established in Alfort, France and soon veterinary schools built on the Lyon model appeared in Germany, England and other European countries.

Those readers keen on the Sport Of Kings may know the name Eclipse a racehorse from which much of today’s bloodstock is descended. When Eclipse died there was only one qualified veterinary surgeon a Mr St.Bel a graduate from Lyon in England, being the only one he was called upon to carry out the post mortem on Eclipse, this brought the profession to the notice of the public of the time in England. Mr St. Bel then went on to establish the first British veterinary school in London at Camden Town and four students started his course in 1792.

The British Royal Army Veterinary Service was founded in 1796 as the public who would have been horse lovers at the time were outraged that more Army horses were being lost by disease, ignorance and poor husbandry than were lost in action. Because of this anger questions were asked in Parliament and the outcome was the formation of the Army Veterinary Service. Professor Edward Coleman, was put in charge and graduates of the London Veterinary School were attached to the regiments of cavalry, then a very glamorous part of the army. John Shipp was the first veterinary surgeon commissioned into the Army, he joined the 11th Light Dragoons and is now regarded as the father of the modern Royal Army Veterinary Corp. So you can see the organisation of veterinary medicine was established in two fronts, one civilian being the veterinary schools and the other being the army.

But what of the actual nuts and bolts of the practice of veterinary medicine in this period? In 1816 the stethoscope was invented and in 1845 the hypodermic syringe appeared a French vet called Mr Tabourin was responsible for improving the original design. In 1847 the worlds first operation on an animal using anaesthesia was carried out at the veterinary school in London, prior to that primitive operations on horses and other animals were carried out under restraint but the suffering must have been immense and surgery on animals did not really advance until after this point. So by the late nineteenth century veterinary medicine was evolving into something we might recognise today, anaesthesia, syringes, stethoscopes. Drug therapy at this time would be more primitive compared to modern times but advances were being made in parallel to human medicine. For the first time the actual causes of diseases were being uncovered and vaccination was understood and was being deployed. The individual vets range of dugs would consist of plant remedies and tonics containing such things as morphine, epsom salts, turpentine and such like. I myself had a small glimpse into the past when in the early 1980′s I worked for a vet who had graduated prior to the second world war. He still mixed [ or had me mix ] red drench which was turpentine and ether, and white drench which was epsom salts, the formulations were kept secret from the farmers and horse owners and we stuck our own labels on the bottles. These products sold by the dozen each week, he also carried out line firing, pin firing and blistering on horses, a practice hopefully discontinued nowadays. Needless to say I did not stay long in that practice.

As veterinary medicine continued to slowly develop along came the first world war in 1914, animals had their place and horses, dogs and even pigeons were press ganged into service. The British Army relied heavily on its horses and mules. Animals were designated ‘light draught’ (from a height of 15h 2ins to 16h and a weight of up to 1,200lb) were used to pull light artillery,wagons and ambulances, they carried carry supplies, food and water and ammunition. To put it simply, they were the backbone of the Army’s supply lines at a time when mechanisation was in its infancy. Dogs were used as messengers and proved to be as reliable as soldiers in the dangerous job of carrying messages. The complexities of trench warfare meant that communication was always a problem and wireless communication and telephony was as much in its infancy as motor transport was then. Carrier pigeons were the most successful war ” animal ” their great strength was not only their extraordinary homing instinct but also the speed at which they flew. Shooting one down would have been all but impossible the pigeon always got through. For man and for animals both this was a time of carnage and thousands of animals died in this war. However where the animals went so did the Veterinary Corps and in 1918 in recognition of their services and bravery they were given the ” royal ” status and became the royal army veterinary corp.

The lessons of history were of course quickly forgotten and along came the second world war, you would have thought that there would have been fewer animals lost but not so, It is estimated that 14 million horses out of the 21 million used by the Russians on the Eastern Front perished between June 1941 and May 1945. In 1943 Soviet mine dogs were responsible for discovering 529,000 German mines and the Russian army deployed suicide dogs wearing explosive back packs which were trained seek food under tanks and when released blew up the enemy tanks. Again carnage for both man and animals and the army veterinary surgeons on both sides played their part. Out of this unfortunate time came a great discovery which was to advance veterinary medicine, a great step forward, antibiotics, while not used in animals in this period they were soon going to be.

What marks my Period of Development phase of veterinary medicine is that there was almost no regard for the treatment of pet animals although these were commonly kept in this period. Motor cars and motor transport did not come into anything like common use until after the first world war so the veterinary surgeon would normally treat horses used for transport and for war as well food production animals on farms. At this time almost all the vets were men. From my researches I have a feeling that the private veterinary surgeons of this period had very little social status, take Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx) as an example in the film A Day At The Races, who is a veterinary surgeon illegally employed as a medical doctor! All this is going to change in my next phase of the history of veterinary medicine.

Scott

You can read part three of this series here : LINK