Veterinarian Medical Directory

Anniversary inspires veterinary history commemoration

“I would say 95 to 98 percent of veterinary literature before about 1800 is about horses,” said North, head of rare books and early manuscripts at the library. (In the rare-book world, 1800 marks a transition from hand-printing to machine presses.) North added: “There were maybe a couple of books about dogs and some of the horse books do talk about sheep and cows, but really, (it was) the horse (that) was such an important animal economically and militarily.” The story told by the roughly 20 documents that make up the National Library of Medicine’s exhibition begins long before Bourgelat’s day. One of the oldest entries in the show is an image of a wounded horse that appears in a German manuscript prepared circa 1580. Called Wounded Horse Chart, North said, it illustrates the locations where a horse was likely to be hurt in battle; the text gives instruction on caring for each kind of wound. The chart is similar to Wound Man , an illustration dating to the Middle Ages showing injuries a person might incur through battle or accident, with accompanying text describing treatments. Such traditional methods began to give way to a modern scientific approach in the 18th century during the period known as Enlightenment. “A lot of the sciences were changing at that time,” North recounted. “France was at the core of it. They were saying, ‘Look, if you’re going to say the sky is blue, you have to measure it; you have to tell why. If you’re going to say it’s cold today, figure out what the temperature is and write it down and study it.’ ” Across the Atlantic, veterinary education took longer to catch on. North said a few small private veterinary programs sprouted in the 1840s in the United States. The training might run three or four months; those who completed the course would be conferred a VS, or veterinary surgery, degree.

Conflicts of Interest in the Veterinary Profession | Dogs Naturally

The role of the veterinary profession in preventing sickness and suffering in beloved dogs and cats should be central. But because of conflicts of interest, as between selling products for profit and putting the best interests of the animal patient before those of running a business, the problems within the veterinary profession bear similarities to those in the human medical profession, which was recently called into question by the U.S. Institute of Medicine (part of the National Academy of Sciences). Such potential conflicts of interest reach deep into the veterinary teaching curriculum, where the influence of the multinational drug and pet food companies is evident at colleges around the world. The effects are seen in everyday veterinary practice.

Unnecessary vaccinations. Far too many veterinarians administer unnecessary annual vaccinations to animals. In dogs—who are harmed more frequently than cats by this practice—this can result in much suffering from chronic health problems such as allergies, neurological and joint problems, and autoimmune and endocrine diseases. Cats are prone to develop often fatal skin cancer at the site of vaccine injection.

Inappropriate nutrition. Cats suffer more than dogs from poor nutrition because they are obligate carnivores requiring a meat-based diet. Too many veterinarians are profiting from selling dry cat foods high in cereals and soy; these only too often lead to obesity, diabetes mellitus, urinary tract and inflammatory bowel disease, and other chronic degenerative diseases. The veterinarians then profit from treating these diseases and from prescribing expensive special diets that would not be needed if the cats had been fed properly from the start.

But dogs are not without diet-related problems, such as chronic skin and digestive problems, ear and anal gland infections, and a host of other maladies including depression and epilepsy. These clear up once the dogs are taken off highly processed manufactured foods.