Reading for Pleasure

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Convolvulus Jalapa from Medical Botany by John Stephenson. Vol. 1, 1834

Today is World book day.  Some of us will remember the £1 book tokens given out at school, picking out our favourite book at the book shop and rushing home to read it– today is definitely a day for the bookworm!  World book day is a celebration of illustrators, authors and, most importantly, reading.

As a veterinary library, we are mostly visited by vets and veterinary nurses doing personal research.  We would love for more of our library users to while away the hours in our Historical Collection, reading just for the pleasure of it.  Our Historical Collection contains some fascinating and important works that our users may not know about. Even without the veterinary background that puts the contents of our collection into context, I am still constantly surprised by the beautiful artwork or an old fashioned turn of phrase.  Some of my favourite pictures and extracts make a weekly appearance on our Twitter feed.

Our Historical Collection contains some great material.  George Stubbs’ (1724-1806), the renowned English painter of horses, appears in the collection.   If early photography is more your thing, how about Animal locomotion an electro – photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal movements ; 1872 – 1885 by Eadweard Muybridge, the man who proved a horse could fly?  Perhaps 16th century country affairs is what interests you? The oldest work in our collection is a 1514 copy of the Libri de re rustica published by the Aldine Press in Venice, purchased by the RCVS Library in 1963 for just £25.

So if you are ever in London, stop by to read and explore our truly unique collection.  We’re always happy to show it off!  Please contact the Librarian, Clare Boulton, for visiting details c.boulton@rcvstrust.org.uk

Read more about how we safe guard our valuable collection, with our Adopt a Book scheme

Warrior – one of the real war horses

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In an introductory note to Sidney Galtray’s  The horse and the war Field-Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces, states:

“I hope that this account … will bring home to the peoples of the British Empire …  the wisdom of breeding animals for the two military virtues of hardiness and activity.”

Last night’s Channel 4 Programme War horse: the real story brought home the reality of those two military virtues.  Images of horses pulling enormous loads and passing through the notorious ‘Hellfire Corner’ made harrowing viewing.

To counter this archive footage of soldiers talking warmly about ‘their’ horses and photos of them at rest beside their animals was incredibly moving.

This human-animal bond was clearly important and touchingly the Blue Cross provided advice in its handbook for Drivers, Gunners and Mounted Soldiers on how to comfort and revive a weary horse.  Soldiers were to told to  ‘Pull his ears and hand rub his legs and he will appreciate it.’

As the programme showed this unique relationship between horse and rider was never so clear as in the story of General Jack Seely, and his horse ‘Warrior.’  Seely and Warrior saw active service throughout WW1 as part of the Canadian Cavalry and led one of the last ever cavalry charges.

Much has been written about Seely and Warrior, not least by Seely himself in his book My Horse Warrior, which is beautifully illustrated by Alfred Munnings.  In an article in the Veterinary Times Bob Michell says of this book that it is  ‘not just a eulogy, it is the most unusual love story you will ever read.’   It has recently been reprinted and is well worth a read.

References

Galtrey, Sidney (1918) The horse and the war London : Country Life and George Newnes
Michell, Bob (2010) Equine sacrifice for king and country Veterinary Times 17 May, p22-23
Seely, Jack (1934) My horse warrior London: Hodder & Stoughton.  Reprinted in 2011 with an introduction by Seely’s grandson Brough Scott as Warrior :The Amazing Story of a Real War Horse Racing Post Books

Celebrating women’s achievements

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Thousands of events will take place around the world tomorrow to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD).  This day has been observed, in one incarnation or another, for over 100 years.   Today, IWD celebrates women’s achievements and looks forward to a bright, safe and equal future for women.

Over the next few days the Library blog will feature two guest posts, on ‘Equal pay for equal work’ for female veterinary surgeons, from Julie Hipperson, PhD student at Imperial College London.  The RCVS Charitable Trust, in collaboration with Imperial College London and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), are supporting Julie’s PhD entitled ‘Veterinary training and veterinary work: a female perspective, 1919 -2000.’  You can follow Julie’s work here, on her blog, Pioneers and Professionals.

In honour of IWD, the Library has designed a small display that showcases our extensive archive on the first female president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS), Dame Olga Uvarov, a Russian refugee.

Equal Pay for Equal Work – Part 1

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Part one of two guest blog posts from Julie Hipperson, PhD student at Imperial College London.

In February 1943, the Council of the SWVS were not surprised when their attention was alerted to the fact that the Veterinary Record was carrying adverts which offered different salaries for men and women.  The issue of equal pay for equal work was by this time on the national agenda thanks to the efforts of women’s organisations such as the British Federation of Business and Professional Women, who had been spurred on by the reality that women being deployed into essential war work were receiving far less than their male counterparts, and due to the importance of the issue the adverts sparked a conversation within the SWVS about the suitability of adopting the principle of equal pay for equal work within the veterinary profession.

The widely-held opinion was that in small animal practices women should have similar salaries, and the general view was that in routine laboratory work women should be on the same scale as men.  As such, the final resolution was that the Council would lodge a formal note of protest if a salary were offered on a lower scale for a woman.  There was, however, dissension voiced over the issue of agricultural practice; as women could not lift heavy weights, the argument ran, they should have a lower rate in these type of work.  This was disputed, some arguing that even male practitioners also required lay assistance ‘for the heavy jobs’, and due to the important nature of the debate, a survey was sent out to its members mid-1944.  In total, it had been sent to 192 women, and they received a 35% response rate.  Of the replies received, 57 had given an unqualified ‘yes’ to the question of whether women should receive equal pay for equal work.  Eight, however, agreed in principle but were not sure that women could do equal work.

The issue of women’s strength was something which had been discussed during the debates on women’s entry to the profession, and would continue to be discussed, but what is interesting about this view of women’s pay in agricultural practice is that it links the issue of equal pay to a woman’s physical ability to do the job, rather than their intellectual ability.  It becomes less a question of a right predicated on inalienable equality, a view the more strident women’s groups were voicing, and more a pragmatic assessment of their ability as women to do the job they were being asked to do.  This could perhaps be characterised as striving for an equality of opportunity, rather than necessarily equality of pay.

by Julie Hipperson.  Part 2 to follow.

Read more about the profession on our webpage, Capturing Life in Practice  Follow Julie’s blog, Pioneers and Professionals

Equal Pay for Equal Work – Part 2

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The final instalment of Julie Hipperson’s piece to mark International Women’s Day.

The last post looked at how in its early days the SWVS was conflicted about adopting whole-sale the notion of equal pay for equal work based on their physical ability to do the job, an ambiguity beautifully encapsulated in an interview held with Mary Brancker, as part of the Capturing Lives in Practice project. When asked about the physical strength required in being a vet, she replied:

Well, in a way, in those days particularly, you realised you weren’t as strong as a man; that you were different, and that it was a strain trying to fit yourself in…You didn’t really compete with the men, if you were sensible.  Some of them tried to compete, and that wasn’t satisfactory.  I did sort of realise that wasn’t…that you must admit, in all honesty, there were things you couldn’t do.  But on the other hand, you did realise that you’d got to try to do things that didn’t come naturally to you.[1]

Their nuanced response was perhaps largely subsumed by the SWVS’s decision at policy level in the 1940s to formally protest against pay inequality, but it was not entirely extinguished.  In 1947, for example, when the Ministry of Agriculture issued a proposed revised scale of salaries, the SWVS felt that it ought to lodge on behalf of some of its members that the Society ‘strongly disapproves the scale for women, which do not uphold the principle of equal pay for equal work”. Again, we can see that whilst formal objection focused on equal pay, the caveat to this was that it was not a view universally held within the Society.  I would suggest that it was this reluctance to subscribe wholesale to the notion of equal pay which made the Society wary of aligning themselves with the BFMPW, refusing its invitation in 1945 to affiliate, not because its members did not, in the majority, support the principle, but rather because the aims and tactics of the other organisations were predicated on a certainty of equality in all forms, a certainty which was not necessarily shared by all members of the SWVS.

It was a complicated issue, further nuanced in the 1960s and 1970s by developments such as part-time work, disputes about pay scales linked to qualifications, and greater questions being asked about women’s ability to hold their own in the market place.  However, looking at the SWVS’s views on equal pay in the early days begins to tell us much about how the Society positioned itself on questions of feminist principle, and it begins to say something about the wider profession’s assessment of what makes a confident, competent practitioner.

Read more about the profession on our webpage, Capturing Life in Practice  Follow Julie’s blog, Pioneers and Professionals

[1] Quote used courtesy of the British Library and the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University.

The thrill of ‘The Chace’

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William Somervile The Chace 1767 feeding hounds

Feeding hounds

Today is  World Poetry Day, so to mark the occasion we have brought out one of the poetry books we have in our Historical Collection, William Somervile’s The Chace: a poem (id 15172).  This was first published in 1735 and we have a copy of the fifth edition which was published in 1767.

William Somervile (1675–1742), was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford.  Showing no early aptitude for literature, Somervile turned his hand to poetry in middle age. For most of his adult life he lived on the family estate in Edstone, Warwickshire where he devoted himself to field sports, the subject of his best known poems.

The Chace is written in four books of blank verse in which Somervile conveys the excitement and dangers of hunting, as well as its place in history. It also covers dog breeding and training, hare and stag hunting and, in one section, even takes in hunting in the ‘magnificent manner of the Great Mogul.’

It starts with the call to the chase: ‘the sport of kings’ from the ‘horse-sounding horn’.  It goes on to describe in detail not only the thrill of the hunt, ‘the huntsman ever gay, robust and bold,’ but what Somervile sees as the cruelty.  The poem also explores the bond between the huntsman and his horse.  The death of  a much loved horse is greatly mourned:

‘Unhappy quadrapede! No more, alas!
Shall thy fond master with his voice applaud
Thy gentleness, thy speed; or with his hand
Stroke the soft dappled sides, as he each day
Visits thy stall, well pleas’d; no more shalt thou
With sprightly neighings  … glad his proud heart’

Want to read more?  You can find the 1802 edition here

Horses and the problem of sore backs

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“Sore backs appear inseparable from mounted service, they have existed as long as the horse has been used in war … it was reasonable to suppose … as knowledge advanced, a reduction in this class of injury should have been possible.”

So says Frederick Smith in his book A veterinary history of the war in South Africa 1899-1902 (item id 003722) in the section on the history of sore backs.  He then goes on to claim that in the 40 years following the Battle of Waterloo all “the lessons of war appear to have been forgotten.”

Later campaigns meant that the topic became a matter for discussion again. In the early 1880s General Sir Frederick FitzWygram, Commander of the Cavalry Brigade, studied the problem showing that it was often the construction of the saddle that was to blame.

Smith - skeleton of a horse shoing back bone and ribs

Smith’s Skeleton of horse showing back bone and ribs

The topic then became the subject of a series of lectures, delivered by Smith, at the Army Veterinary School in Aldershot. These lectures were eventually published in 1891 as A manual of saddles and sore backs (item id 26542).

The manual is set out in four sections: the first covers the anatomy and physiology of the back because, as Smith states, “no accurate conception of the fitting of a saddle … can be formed until we have some knowledge of the structure on which the saddle rests.” This is followed by 16 pages on the construction of a saddle, 8 pages of instruction on how to fit one properly and finally 17 pages on ‘sore backs – how they are caused, prevented and remedied.’  The book contains 11 illustrations – 6 are anatomical, 5 on fitting a saddle with the final one showing the sites of the various injuries.

In spite of the lectures and manual it would appear that little changed – when referring to the South African War Smith states that “sore backs represented one of the chief causes of inefficiency.”

Smith - How to fit a girth correctly

Smith – How to fit a girth correctly

This view is also expressed by William Snowball Mulvey in his little (20 page) book Sore back and its causes in army horses on a campaign (item id 26379) which was published in 1902. Sore backs had been the topic of Mulvey’s RCVS Fellowship Thesis and one of the reasons for this choice was “The fact that nine out of every ten cases which came before my notice in South Africa were the so-called sore backs.” By publishing his thesis Mulvey hoped to make his observations more widely available.

The book is very much a practical manual – it identifies 9 causes of sore backs and  then shows how to prevent the injuries occurring in the first place – as Mulvey says in his closing words “the rational treatment of sore backs, is of course, the removal of the cause.”

Interested in finding out more? The notes and illustrations Smith made when carrying out research for his lectures and manual form part of the Frederick Smith Collection , they provide a fascinating insight into the meticulous way Smith carried out his rearch on this topic.

References

Mulvey, William Snowball (1902) Sore back and its causes in army horses on a campaign . Fellowship theses later published by H & W Brown

Smith, Fred (1891) A manual of saddles and sore backs London: HMSO

Smith, Frederick (1919) A veterinary history of the war in South Africa 1899-1902 London: H. & W. Brown