Download PDF | Susan D. Jones, Peter A. Koolmees - A Concise History of Veterinary Medicine-Cambridge University Press (2022).
440 Pages
A Concise History of Veterinary Medicine
From Ayurvedic texts to botanical medicines to genomics, ideas and expertise
about veterinary healing have circulated between cultures through travel,
trade, and conflict. In this broad-ranging and accessible study spanning
400 years of history, Susan D. Jones and Peter A. Koolmees present the first
global history of veterinary medicine and animal healing. Drawing on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives, this book addresses how
attitudes toward animals, disease causation theories, wars, problems of food
insecurity, and the professionalization and spread of European veterinary
education have shaped new domains for animal healing, such as preventive
medicine in intensive animal agriculture and the need for veterinarians
specializing in zoo animals, wildlife, and pets. It concludes by considering
the politicization of animal protection, changes in the global veterinary
workforce, and concerns about disease and climate change. As mediators
between humans and animals, veterinarians and other animal healers have
both shaped and been shaped by the social, cultural, and economic roles of
animals over time.
susan d. jones is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the
University of Minnesota and a trained veterinarian and historian. Along with
her co-author, Peter A. Koolmees, she served as co-president of the World
Association for the History of Veterinary Medicine, 2008–2014.
emeritus professor peter a. koolmees is a member of the
Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the
Humanities of Utrecht University and a trained BSc and historian. He served
as president in 2000–2004, and co-president in 2008–2014, of the World
Association for the History of Veterinary Medicine.
Preface
In 2010, as members of the World Association for the History of Veterinary
Medicine, we were fortunate to hold our annual congress in the delightful
Mediterranean port of Antalya, Turkey. Over potent glasses of raki, our hosts
immediately got down to business. Turkish law required all veterinary students
to take a course in veterinary history. Where, our hosts asked, could they find a
general textbook on the history of veterinary medicine to use in their courses?
The book needed to be concise, written in English, with an international scope.
We exchanged glances. No such book existed. We began then to think about
writing this book. Our goal is to provide a broad framework, informed by
global and world history, for the past 500 years of animal healing and
veterinary medicine’s development.
There is so much excellent research about the history of veterinary medicine
and animal healing available. Unfortunately, we could not include all important
events and research in a “concise” book. Instead, this book will trace broader
themes that can (and should) be filled in with the exciting stories, discoveries,
and episodes of each proud national tradition. As a global history, we have also
sought to highlight the less well-known voices and stories, and to consider
“veterinary medicine” as a broad set of animal care practices. Some of these
stories are appearing in English for the first time, and they represent the authors’
twenty-plus years of collaborating with scholars from around the world.
The daunting task of writing a global history of modern veterinary medicine
could not be successfully completed without the work of many scholars. From
Spain to South Korea and Kenya to Brazil, many people are interested in the
history of animals and veterinary medicine. It is impossible for us to thank
every person who has contributed to this book, but we have some special debts
we would like to acknowledge. Our colleagues in the World Association for
the History of Veterinary Medicine have generously shared their own research
with us, and we especially thank: Ilkka Alitalo, Tamay Başağaç Gül, Martin
Brumme, Myung-Sun Chun, Ferruh Dinçer, John Fisher, Joaquín Sánchez de
Lollano, Miguel Marquez, Johann Schäffer, and Abigail Woods. We remember scholars no longer with us whose work informs veterinary history, especially: Jean Blancou, Miguel Cordero del Campillo, Angela von den
Driesch, Robert Dunlop, Denes Karasszon, Ivan Katič, William McNeill,
Wilhelm Rieck, Leon Saunders, Calvin Schwabe, and Fred Smithcors.
This
book stands on their shoulders.
We thank our editor, Lucy Rhymer, and the staff at Cambridge University
Press; and our employers, the Universities of Minnesota and Utrecht.
Universiteit Utrecht’s Descartes Center for the History and Philosophy of the
Sciences and Humanities and its Director, Bert Theunissen, generously funded
a writing semester together in Utrecht in 2018. Finally, history cannot be done
without the substantial help of librarians, archivists, and museum curators. Of
many, we specially mention Trenton Boyd, Christophe Degueurce, the late
Ivan Katic, the late Guus Mathijsen, and Susanne Whitaker.
We are completing this book during two important historical events: the
COVID-19 pandemic, caused by a coronavirus originating in wild bats and
possibly spread by animals and raw food at open-air markets; and renewed
concerns about worldwide socioeconomic inequality due to racism, discrimination, lack of education, wars, and colonialism, including the dangers of
disease exposure and violence.
These events have necessarily influenced
how we address some of the issues in this book, specifically: the history of
zoonotic diseases; the interactions between human populations and wildlife in
the environment; the development of agricultural practices such as raising
livestock in close confinement; and the roles of veterinarians in “One
Health” and other approaches that help an increasing global population of
humans live with disease risks.
COVID-19 has shown how pandemics can still cause serious disruptions of
modern life despite advanced scientific knowledge and technological progress.
At its basis is a reminder that people cannot simply control nature.
Socioeconomic inequality still plays a role in the development of veterinary
medicine in terms of possessing and exploiting food and other animals and
enabling veterinary care for these animals.
Therefore, we have sought to make
this book inclusive of cultures, beliefs, and practices from around the world.
Political ideology, religion, wars, and socioeconomic inequality, including
ideas and practices on serfdom and slavery as well as social-Darwinist and
other concepts of racism and discrimination, also influenced the history of
human–animal relationships, and thus the development of veterinary medicine.
Within these contexts we shall also address human and animal suffering from
wars, epizootic and zoonotic pandemics, disturbed production, and supply of
foods of animal origin, as well as the inclusion or exclusion of people from the
veterinary profession based on gender, ethnicity, and other factors.
We have much work to do. Let us all, as informed citizens and dedicated
professionals, pledge to use our abilities to make the world a better place for
people, animals, and their environments.
Introduction
Human–Animal Relationships and the Need for
Veterinary Medicine
The word “veterinary” can be traced back in time to the Latin veterinum,
which meant “beast of burden.” Of course, “veterinary” has come to include
many types of animals, not only beasts of burden, and the history of animal
healers and veterinarians is a rich one. This book is a synthesis of broad
themes, not a catalogue of every important event or individual in veterinary
history; indeed, that would be impossible in a concise history. Yet there are
so many fascinating stories we want to tell from all around the world. In
India, sacred animals (especially cattle) warranted special feeding and care;
what happened when the British colonizers arrived (1800s), with their habit
of eating beef?
In eighteenth-century Spain, horses were more valuable than
men on the battlefield; while in France, Charles Vial de St. Bel, first director
of the London veterinary school, died in agony of glanders (a horse disease).
The model of veterinary education still used today developed amidst the
violence of the French and American revolutions (late 1700s), and veterinarians found themselves at the forefront of wars and imperial invasions for the
next 150 years. Human–animal relationships and the need for animal healers
have reflected the impacts of environmental changes, cultural encounters,
food production, international trade, economic developments, and imperialism and colonialism. By focusing on the uses of animals for food, transport,
the military, and companionship, we situate our history of veterinary
medicine over the past 500 years within these broader perspectives while
highlighting some of the stories and experiences that make this history
so interesting.
“Veterinary medicine” can be defined as the diagnosis and treatment of
animal health problems in the context of human–animal relationships.
Therefore, we use a broad definition of “veterinary medicine” to include many
types of animal healing throughout history. In each place and time, a veterinary
marketplace existed that could include formally educated veterinarians, botanical healers, castrators, disease specialists, and many other types of animal
healers (including the animal’s owner). Today’s veterinarians work in the
spotlight of local and global social concerns. Whether an urban “pet vet,” a manager of huge cattle populations on feedlots, a wildlife conservationist,
medical researcher, or the last resort for a farmer with a sick animal,
veterinarians mediate between the interests of animals and their owners,
animal producers, consumers, and government authorities. It is a complex
task, requiring more than just technical skills and knowledge. Like other
animal healers through the centuries, today’s veterinarians must understand
the sociocultural and economic pressures driving (or limiting) their activities.
For them, history is a guide that deepens their understanding of veterinary
medicine today. We organize the chapters of this book around different
problems and how people have responded to them over time: keeping
animals alive and well in (sometimes) dangerous places and situations;
communicating with individuals in multiple cultures; and working within
political, economic, and social opportunities and constraints.
Our goals are
twofold: to frame veterinary history in the larger social and cultural context
of global and world history, and to help students think critically about their
profession and the broad scope of the sciences that inform it, from anatomy
to epidemiology.
History also offers windows into how animals themselves have functioned
as important actors in human history, and how their roles have affected the
development of veterinary healing and medicine through time. Animals have
shaped the human-built environment around the world: animals’ needs determined the geographical spread of agricultural societies and structured cities
while their labor powered industrialization, human migrations, and wars.
Animal behaviors, as well as human interactions with them, have both guided
and limited their healers’ work. Therefore, every chapter will include attention
to animals’ behaviors, social lives, ecology, and environments as well as
human sociocultural contexts. We also integrate the ever-changing philosophical thinking about human–animal relationships and how this impacted the
treatment of animals. This contributes to our “new veterinary history”
approach, which reflects relatively recent changes in the scholarship. The
history of veterinary medicine is based on texts from antiquity onward, and
scholars around the world specialize in translating and analyzing these classic
texts. Over the past twenty-five years, professionally trained social historians
have joined veterinary writers.
They have built on and revised existing veterinary history, adding critical analysis to translations and narratives, broadening
the focus beyond a handful of professional veterinarians and well-known
scientists, and adopting new sources and methods from anthropology, environmental history, and global history. One milestone in global history, the beginning of the exchange between the Old and New Worlds, sets our choice of time
period to begin around 1500. Although the scope of this book dictates
narrowing the time period to the past 500 years, we next outline some of the
major themes in earlier human–animal healing that inform this book.
Early Animal Healing
Domestication
The story of veterinary medicine begins with the age-old human problem:
food. For thousands of years, humans fed themselves by hunting wild animals
and gathering plants. Domesticating plants and animals yielded more food than
the foraging way of life, resulting in denser human populations in permanent
agricultural settlements. Domestication may be defined as selectively taming,
feeding, and breeding animals in captivity, thereby modifying them from their
wild ancestors for the benefit of humans. (Experts believe domestication
started in the Middle East around 10,000 BCE.) On prehistoric farms, domesticated animals replaced wild animals as the main source of animal protein.
Milking sheep, goats, bovines, or camels kept for several years produced much
more food than when they were hunted and eaten as meat.
Livestock also
provided manure for fertilizer, contributing to higher crop yields.
Animals’ superior muscle power created bigger fields and revolutionized
agriculture. With the invention of the yoke, collar, hame, and harness, the
power of oxen and horses could be applied to ploughing more soil for growing
crops. The breast-strap or breast-collar, invented in China in the period
481–221 BCE, became known throughout Central Asia by the seventh century
and was introduced to Europe by the eighth century. This preceded the horse
collar, which is a part of a horse harness that is used to distribute the load
around a horse’s neck and shoulders when pulling a wagon or plough.
A yoke
is a wooden beam normally used between a pair of oxen or other animals to
enable them to pull together on a load when working in pairs, as oxen usually
do. There are several types of yokes used in different cultures, and for different
types of oxen, horses, mules, donkeys, and water buffalo.
When the horse was
harnessed in the collar, the horse could apply 50 percent more power to a task
than could an ox within the same time period, due to the horse’s greater speed.
For this reason, oxen were largely replaced by horses, a technological change
that produced more food, boosted economies, and reduced reliance on subsistence farming. All these technologies not only increased the efficiency of
agriculture (to feed rapidly growing human populations) but also increased
the importance and value of the animals using them.
Domestication shaped the development of human societies in other ways.
Taming horses, donkeys, and camels made it possible to transport people and
heavy goods overland for long distances. Next to transport, horses became
crucial in warfare, and their essential military role lasted into the twentieth
century. First, horses were ridden bareback; later, they were yoked to wagons
and battle chariots, which changed warfare in the Near East, the
Mediterranean, and China dramatically. For instance, the Hyksos with their horse-drawn chariots conquered Egypt in 1674 BCE. Similarly, Attila the Hun
invaded the Roman Empire with his horsemen. In South Asia, elephants were
crucial beasts of war due to their strength, size, and ability to endure harsh
conditions and attacks. Next to large mammals, small animals such as
chickens, ducks, geese, guinea fowls, other birds, and insects (honeybees)
were domesticated because of their usefulness for human societies. Some
wolves co-evolved with humans, becoming dogs that worked as hunting
companions and guards or supplied food or companionship.
Cats began to
live near human settlements to hunt mice and rats eating grain. Domestication
meant increasing human control over nature, enabling the growth of everlarger human populations.
Veterinary medicine is as old as the process of domesticating and utilizing
these animals. Provision of veterinary care seems obvious because these
animals were so valuable to agrarian societies. To secure and sustain food
production, prehistoric farmers and shepherds worked to keep their horses,
camels, elephants, sheep, goats, bovines, and pigs healthy. Traces of veterinary
activities can be found in prehistory. For example, in 2018 paleo-pathologists
found evidence for trepanation in a cow’s skull from the Neolithic period
found in France. Castration of bulls, healed broken legs in cattle, dog breeding,
and crossbreeding horses and donkeys have also been well documented in the
literature. Such ancient veterinary activities were performed by experts, probably mainly farmers and shepherds themselves. Disease in humans as well as
in animals was probably considered the result of magical forces, a supernatural
intervention, or a divine castigation. Thus, treatment of humans and animals
was based on a combination of ritual healing and medical or surgical therapies
that corresponded to theories about disease causation.
Traces of Veterinary Medicine in Antiquity: Keeping
Animals Healthy
We define these early veterinary activities broadly as keeping animals healthy
(the formal veterinary profession only developed much later, as we discuss in
Chapter 3). Archaeological and written sources, including bones, statuettes,
murals, mosaics, and reliefs, show that animal diseases were a major problem
for ancient societies. In 2015, archaeologists analyzed bones of cattle from the
Middle East dating to 8,000 years ago and found the bones to be infected with
bovine tuberculosis.
The oldest written account of an animal disease is about
rabies (caused by infected domesticated dogs). This infectious (zoonotic)
disease, which is lethal for humans if not treated, was already feared in
antiquity. One part of the legal code of Eshnunna, from ancient
Mesopotamia (Tell Asmar in present-day Iraq) dated in the twentieth century
BCE, states that the owner of a rabid dog had to pay a fine if his dog bit ahuman and caused death because the owner did not control his dog.
Controlling diseases in animals used for food, transport, and agriculture was
essential to the success of domestication, and human intervention in animal
health is as old as domestication.
History helps us to interpret the activities of past peoples; histories show the
continuity of change over time and the fact that past events could have created
very different outcomes. For example, domestication progressed most rapidly in
particular regions due to a combination of environmental and social developments.
The existence of several domesticable species in the environment was
crucial, but so was the development of social patterns that encouraged people to
seek more efficient food production. Fast-forwarding several millennia, we see
that we are shaped by the past but that nothing has been inevitable. Wars, famines,
natural disasters: all these events affected different societies in different ways.
We must also remember these lessons of history when we explore veterinary
history. Animal healing has a long history, but, of course, we can recover only
a small part of it because many texts and other sources have not survived.
A popular theme within veterinary history has been the search for the oldest
known veterinarian in the ancient Middle East; however, from our point of
view, this is a futile undertaking because animal healing was so obviously
widespread by this time. We may never obtain the full picture of ancient
animal healing.
What we can do is to situate the surviving historical sources
within the social activities and cultural beliefs of the time. We can gain some
insight into how people and animals lived so long ago, and that insight has
great value today. This new model of veterinary history focuses not just on
“finding the first,” but on understanding “the most”: the histories of how the
common people and their animals lived.
This new model of veterinary history also incorporates a global history
approach, because most Western-based veterinary historians’ works have not
included information from unfamiliar cultures, especially those in Asia and
Africa. But to explore early veterinary activities, we must investigate places
such as ancient India, where Vedic tradition says that both human and animal
medicine arose from observing how animals and birds healed themselves.
Veterinary activities were part of the ancient Ayurveda, or science of life.
During the Vedic period (c. 1500–500 BCE), cattle played important roles as
sacred animals and prized possessions, and early animal hospitals and sanctuaries were dedicated to cattle. Early treatises also focused on the Asian
elephant (prized in warfare and for transportation), but healing practices were
well developed for many species. At this time, veterinary activities were
financed by the state, and the emperor Ashoka the Great sponsored the early
Ayurvedic veterinary hospitals (still visible in edicts engraved on pillars and
rocks). Ashoka’s motivation was reportedly spiritual: the practice of dharma
linked human and animal welfare. Thus, these ancient institutionalized veterinary activities arose in a sacred society where early veterinary and
medical practice was connected to sacred rituals and spiritual beliefs.
Ayurvedic theories on physiology and health and disease spread from India
into China via Buddhist texts and were successively linked to indigenous
perceptions of human and animal bodies within a religious context.
Medical and veterinary practices in the ancient Arab and Mediterranean
worlds were likewise related to religious rituals at first.
Priest-physicians
working in healing temples created theories of health and disease that guided
their activities in human and animal healing. Although religion and rituals
continued to play a role in medical treatments, a secular medicine based on
natural theories of health and disease also emerged. Regular horse-doctors
(ἱππιατρός or hippiatros) in ancient Greece appeared as early as 130 BCE, with
one treatise naming “Metrodoros” as a hippiatros. The most renowned early
Greek horse-doctor was probably Apsyrtos from Bithynia (c. 280–337 CE),
who served in the cavalry of Constantine the Great and whose writings were
praised for centuries. Apsyrtos outlined a coherent system of belief about
animal diseases and based treatments on his theories. For example, he
observed the contagious nature of anthrax, farcy, and glanders and as a result
recommended isolation for sick animals.
During the Roman Empire, professional animal healers, responsible mainly
for the health of equines, were known as veterinarius and mulomedicus.
The
Roman scholar Publius Vegetius Renatus (c. 385 CE) used the term
“veterinarian” in his writings; Arabic scholars translated this to “bitar” or
“baytār,” meaning a surgeon of animals (especially horses). And this observation demonstrates another theme important in this book: both animals and
medical knowledge about them traveled between very different cultures, often
due to the activities of trading (economics) or conquest (war). This was certainly
the case in Iberia (medieval Spain and Portugal), which Muslim armies invaded
to establish the Islamic Al-Andalus region (711–1492), thereby bringing people,
animals, and the learned traditions of Northern Africa and the Middle East into
contact with Europe. The word for professional animal healers in medieval
Iberia, albeitar, was derived from “baytār,” and this was only the Western
appendage of a much larger intellectual empire that extended into central Asia.
The early development of veterinary specialization accelerated during the
ancient period, when large groups of animals were used in agriculture, in armies,
and in supplying the needs of enlarging human settlements.
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