Veterinary medicine is more challenging than human medicine as a vet must be familiar with the anatomy and diseases of many different species. They have to know which treatment is appropriate for which species as it could be ineffective or harmful for another species. They have to be good at medicine and surgery and know all fields of medicine such as dentistry, dermatology, obstetrics, anaesthesiology and plastic surgery. They have to be able to diagnose and treat an animal without the patient being able to tell them what is wrong.

History

For as long as people and animals have been living and working together, there has been a desire to heal animals when they have been sick or injured. There are Chinese writing dating back to about 2,500 BC describing diseases of horses, oxen and buffalo. Indian art from 4,000 years ago show men looking after horses and elephants and Ancient Egyptian art showing them caring for their cattle and dogs.

Cultures that need animals for food, farming and transportation, unsurprisingly, needed to find ways to keep their animals fit and well. The Ancient Romans even had a word for those who looked after sick animals, veterinarius. The first veterinary book was written in about AD 500 by a Roman on the work of a veterinarius. The second veterinary book was written in 1598 by an Italian called Carlo Ruini, his book was called ‘Anatomy of the Horse’.

The original vets were the farriers. They did the job of the vet as well as shoeing horses, working with the horses’ injuries and illnesses, learning their skills on the job. Some of the treatments they used was primitive and could cause more harm than good. Farriers outnumbered trained vets before and long after the first veterinary schools were opened.

The first veterinary school was opened in Europe in the mid-eighteenth century. It was in Lyon in France, Charles Benoit Vial de St Bel was the first principal of the new college, and the first horse was admitted for treatment in 1793.

The Royal Veterinary College was founded in London in 1791. The College first acquired royal patronage from King George IV, and was granted a Charter of Incorporation in 1875.

It is only in the last 30 years that it has become common for women to become vets. This is the same for all the medical professions, when my mother graduation from Newcastle University as a dentist in 1964, she was only one of six women on the course. Vets that treated pets exclusively were rare 50 years ago, most looked after livestock. In fact before the Second World War, most people wouldn’t spend much money on the medical care of their pets. Nowadays, most of the vets graduating from veterinary schools are women and most earn their living treating pet dogs, cats and horses. Many people insure their pets so that they can afford treatment for them that could cost many thousands of pounds.

Prior to the First World War, most of the things we take for granted in medicine weren’t even invented. Antibiotics didn’t exist and dependable anaesthetics weren’t available. Even surgical techniques were minimal and crude. Life was very different at this time. More than half our population worked on farms growing food, cars and trucks were rare and pack horses and mules moved goods from farm to town and from factory to rail yards and ports. When countries went to war, millions of horses and mules went as well and so did thousands of dogs.

Many major human disease epidemics are associated with animals. People lived in close contact with their livestock and where the livestock feeds were stored, rodents thrived and with them the parasites associated with animals and caused these epidemics. People didn’t realise the importance of pasteurisation, refrigeration and the understanding of germs and parasites wasn’t common knowledge until the mid 1800s.

Ever since the mid 1800’s, at least in the advanced countries of the West, there’s been one amazing advance after another in our understanding of disease and our ability to fight and control it. 

Vets have been involved in experimental medicine and surgery throughout the 1900s, whenever a new technique or surgery was developed and tried; it was always done on animals first. Think about the racing industry, there have been many advances in modern veterinary medicine because race horses are so valuable many expensive new medicines and techniques have been tried on them first, leading to advances in human medicine. Vets have been instrumental in the development of organ transplants and almost every other important medical development.

It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that anaesthesia advanced. The absence of any suitable and effective form of anaesthesia severely limited the abilities of a vet as they had to rely on the forceful restraint of animals. This meant that surgical procedures were rarely attempted and if they were, were rarely successful and caused considerable pain and anguish for the patient.  From the 1850s the medical world experienced a boon in anaesthesia, new developments in anaesthetic products and techniques enabled the veterinary surgeon to perform procedures and operations that previously he would have dismissed. In 1847 the first veterinary treatment using anaesthetic techniques was performed at the Veterinary College, London.

Modern Veterinary Medicine

There are now more than 45,000 vets practicing in the United States, mainly in private hospitals and clinics. About 60% of them are only treating animals such as cats and dogs, about 10% treat large animals such as cattle and other livestock and about 5% specialise in treating horses. The rest work in mixed practices, which treat both large and small animals.

Most of the modern vets work is preventative, such as vaccinating, screening and treating animals for internal and external parasites and performing operations that prevent pets from producing unwanted offspring. Small-animal veterinarians also treat their patients’ illnesses and injuries, address the owners’ concerns, and provide referrals to specialists when necessary. Another important responsibility of veterinarians is to provide humane euthanasia (the act of ending a patient’s life).