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Pet keeping: a brief history

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Picture from 'Illustrated Book of the Dog', by Vero Shaw (1890)

Illustrated Book of the Dog, by Vero Shaw (1890)

National Pet Month (7 April – 7 May) is now drawing to a close but one of the enduring messages of the initiative is the benefits of pets for people, and vice versa.   What we need from our companion animals has changed over the centuries, dogs are no longer solely hunting partners, and cats are more than ‘rat catchers’.  We offer our pets shelter and food in exchange for companionship.  A bond based on similar mutual benefits was the foundation of the first human-animal relationships.

The earliest domesticated animal was almost certainly the dog, with the West Asians and Egyptians taming their native wolves.  Rock art in Western Iran places the domestication of the wolf some 12,000 years ago.  Wolf cubs might have been tamed with raw meat or drawn to settlement’s discarded food; they were then trained to as guards, herders and hunters.

Evidence of feline domesticity was found in Khirokita, Cypress where human remains have been found buried alongside cats, dated to around 9000 years ago.  It is thought that Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians kept cats to kill the vermin that would invade grain stores.

In Britain, animal care was rudimentary until the Romans invaded in AD 43.  Along with superior technology, the Romans also brought better health care to our shores, and with that our first form of pet care.   External surgery, wound care, even spaying and castration were practiced.

Dogs and cats were our very first pets but over time other animals have been domesticated.   In the 19th century animal fancying emerged as a hobby which led to all sorts of animals, from chinchillas, to rabbits to birds, being kept as pets, bred and entered into shows.

Over the coming months we will bring you more on the history of the domesticated animal – you can look forward to pieces on rabbit keeping and breeding, bird fancying and more on man’s best friend, the dog

If you would like to read a more in depth history of pet care as carried out by veterinary surgeons, check out ‘A short history of British small animal practice’,by Bruce V. Jones, in Veterinary History, Vol. 15(2), 2010.

The many layers of the dog

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There has been a lot of discussion of anatomical illustrations recently following the opening of the exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery Leonardo da Vinci anatomist.  We have a number of stunning anatomical illustrations in the Historical Collection – the most well known would be in Stubbs’ The anatomy of the horse and then there are those in Carlo Ruini’s Anatomia del cavallo, infermita, et suoi rimedii and Andrew Snape’s Anatomy of an horse.

Although I admire these works my favourite anatomical items are the books of models that we have.  Turn the page and lift the flaps to see what lies behind – it is like being a child again.

We have two complete series of these ‘flap books’:  Vinton’s livestock models – which includes the pig, the sheep, the bull, the cow, the horse, and the mare and foal and Philips’ anatomical and technical models, series 2.

This second set by Philips covers domestic animals.  Again we find the horse, the ox, the sheep and the pig but interestingly we also find the dog. Why interestingly? Well these books were produced in the 1890s, a time when the practice of keeping a dog as a companion animal was not common.Cover of The Dog: its external and internal organisation

The dog: its external and internal organisation: an illustrated representation and brief description was edited by Alexander Constant Piesse MRCVS who graduated from the Royal Veterinary College in 1885 and the anatomical description is by William S Furneaux.

It starts with a 28 page text which gives the general characteristics of dogs, then divides dogs into two types – non-sporting and sporting and gives the characteristics of the main breeds.  This section is illustrated with some rather nice images.

There then follows “a detailed account of the anatomy of the body of the dog; [which] will be illustrated by means of a folding model of the St Bernard”.  The various ‘layers’ are then discussed – starting with the exterior, the skin, and ending with the genital organs.

Finally, there is an explanation of the folding plates with each section numbered to correspond to the model. So we have: Head  – (1) Nose (2) Crest of nose (3) Mouth and upper lip etc

There are 5 folding plates in all – and you lift the flap to reveal the next ‘layer’. The inner ‘layers’ are a mass of flaps – so much so that instructions are given as to how to open them “No 13 [left lung] may be turned upward and 18 [left ventricle] to the left …the interior of the hear them become[s] visible”.

The Dog: its external and internal organisation. Plate 5 the internal organs

Plate 5 showing the internal organs

Please get in touch if you want to visit and explore the layers of the dog – or horse or pig ….

Rabbits: from prey to pet

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Domestic rabbits in 'A Practical Treatise...' by Moubray, 1834

Domestic rabbits in ‘A Practical Treatise…’ by Moubray, 1834

Even though the domestication of the rabbit occurred 2000 years ago, rabbit care before the 19th century was not in the local vet or farmer’s repertoire.  This explains the lack of lagomorph related content in our historical collection.

Contrary to what you may think, rabbits don’t belong to the rodent order but sit in a separate group called lagomorpha.  Lagomorphs have four incisors in the upper jaw and are entirely herbivorous – unlike their similar-looking cousins, the rodents.

We can thank central European monks for the full domestication of the wild European rabbit.  Within the monastery walls rabbits would freely roam and eventually became tame.  In 600 AD, Pope Gregory the Great declared that unborn or new born rabbits were no longer considered meat.  Strangely enough they were to be thought of as aquatic creatures.  Conveniently, this meant they could be eaten during Lent and so the practice of rabbit keeping steadily increased in monasteries.

One of the few books in our historical collection about rabbit keeping has the rather wordy title A practical treatise on breeding, rearing and fattening all kinds of domestic poultry, pigeons and rabbits; also the management of swine, milch cows and bee; with instructions for the private brewery on cider, perry and British wine making by Bonington Moubray (1834).  In this book, the subject of rabbit rearing is lumped together with all the activities that could take place on a small holding, so that a countryman could have one volume for all his needs.  The book contains tips on cooking rabbits (“they make a good dish, cooked like a hare”), extols the quality of the skin and fur (the author is “in the habit of drying the skins, for the linings of nightgowns”) and mentions the four types of rabbits (warreners, parkers, hedgehogs and sweethearts, in case you were wondering).

By 1840, the Metropolitan Rabbit Fancy Club was established in England, were members showed only one breed, the ‘lop eared’.  As animal fancying swept Europe in the late 19th century, rabbits were still killed for their meat but were increasingly kept as parlour pets and exhibited at shows.

Rabbit care has changed a lot over the centuries but one thing still rings true “the teeth of rabbits are very effectual implements of destruction to anything not hard enough to resist them” (Moubray, 1834).  Those lagomorphs can bite!

Changing times

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The editorial in the issue of The Veterinary Record published 100 years ago today was titled  ‘Some changes in our profession’.  In it the author links the noticeable decline in equine veterinary work to the development of ‘motor traction’ but also notes that:

“new channels of work are opening up to us in compensation…The two chief substitutes are canine and feline practice and preventive medicine.”

The editorial then describes the ‘immense’ expansion of work with dogs and cats in the last thirty years, how almost every practice now treats these animals and how the knowledge of canine and feline  diseases and treatments  has grown.

Looking at the statistics on horse ownership in the decade prior to 1912 we can see just how much impact the growth in motorised transportation had.  In 1904 there was an estimated 145,000 horses in London, many of which were owned by the London General Omnibus Company for use in its fleet of horse drawn buses.  By 1911 the LGOC was selling off horses at a rate of 100 a week and ran its last horse bus in September of that year.

Given that scale of change it was inevitable that veterinary surgeons had to look for other sources of income and the increase in the keeping of dogs, in particular, as companion animals offered one such opportunity.  However the interest in the care of small animals began 50 or so years earlier and  had been increasingly reflected in the literature from the mid 1800s.

Frontispiece from Mayhew's Dogs: their management

Frontispiece from Mayhew’s Dogs: their management

In 1847 Edward Mayhew wrote two articles in The Veterinarian relating to dogs and cats, then in the following year in an article he disclosed that canine work formed the bulk of his practice.  His book Dogs: their management, published in 1854, could perhaps be seen as the start of a new focus for the profession.

Further books followed eg John Woodroffe Hill’s The management and diseases of the dog (1878) and John Henry Steel’s A treatise on the diseases of the dog (1888).  The first specific text on small animal surgery was Frederick Hobday’s Canine and feline surgery (1900).

These changes were also reflected in the subjects of theses submitted for the award of RCVS Fellowship – from 1893-1911 there were 5 theses on small animals topics, between 1912-1931 the number almost trebled.

Moving forward nearly a 100 years statistics in the 2010 RCVS Survey of the veterinary profession show that 72% of the time of veterinary surgeons working in clinical practice is spent working with small animals.

 So the  1912 editorial was correct in its prediction that small animal practice would continue to increase and in its confident assertion that:

“we have become of real use to a section of the community very much larger than the horse-owning one and shall continue to be so.”

Celebrating National Pet Month – a selection of open access resources on small animal medicine

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dogandcat2_220widthThis year National Pet Month runs from 1 April- 6 May.  As their web site says they are on a mission to:

  • help promote responsible pet ownership across the UK
  • highlight the important work of pet care professionals and working companion animals
  • raise money for the nation’s pet care charities

As a library we have a role to play in supporting the work of pet care professionals and in particular vets.  As can be expected there is a huge range of resources available on small animals so in honour of National Pet Month we thought we would highlight a few of the open access (free) ones.

Journals:
Acta veterinaria Scandinavia
Banfield Journal: Achieving Success in Practice which has a critically appraised topic in every issue!
Emerging Infectious Diseases
Journal of animal welfare law

For more open access veterinary journals

dogandcat_220widthReview articles:
Yeates, J., Everitt, S., Innes, J. F. and Day, M. J. (2013) Ethical and evidential considerations on the use of novel therapies in veterinary practice. Journal of Small Animal Practice, 54(3), pp. 119-123 This article reviews the ethical and evidential considerations of novel veterinary therapies while safeguarding the welfare of animals.
AVMA Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals: 2013 Edition

Books:
DeBusk, S., Silberstein, N. And O’Keefe, L. (eds.) (2011) Anesthesia for the vet practitioner. Rev. 3rd ed. [online] Portland : Banfield Pet Hospital. Available from http://www.banfield.com/Pet-Owners/About-Us/Medicine/Research/Anesthesia-Book [Accessed 18 April 2013]

dogs-220width_jpgDatabases:
PubMed Central – access to journals in biomedical, life-sciences and veterinary science
AVMA collections – a selection of articles from AVMA scientific journals that have the most practical application on specific subject areas e.g. Canine behaviour series, Disaster preparedness and response (including health of search and rescue dogs), Feral cats, Heartworm disease, Obesity in dogs, Rabies, Spay-neuter

For more open access databases

Trillium_Poncho_cat_dogConferences:
The International Veterinary Information Service (IVIS) provides free access to veterinarians, veterinary students, technicians and animal health professionals worldwide e.g.

American Association of Feline Practitioners Practice Guidelines (1998-)
European Association of Veterinary Diagnostic Imaging (2005-)
European Veterinary Conference (2007-)
European Society of Veterinary Orthopaedics and Traumatology(1998-)
North American Veterinary Conference (2005-)
World Small Animal Veterinary Association (2005-)

All you need to do is register with the website.

So as you can see there is a lot of information out there. Don’t forget if you need help finding your way through it all we are here to help.

First image by Claudio Matsuoka under this Creative Commons License
Second image by Carterse under this Creative Commons License
Third image by MarilynJane under this Creative Commons License
Fourth image by Ohnoitsjamie under this Creative Commons License

Cataloguing the Correspondence of Henry Gray

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As the RCVS Knowledge Archives and Digitisation assistant, my main duties are to scan the historical material, upload it to our Digital Collections website and take part in the promotion of the collection. In recent months, I have worked on a side project: cataloguing the personal correspondence and research papers of veterinary surgeon Henry Gray (1865-1939).

One of the most enjoyable parts of cataloguing Henry Gray’s material is not just the insights into past veterinary practice, but also the veterinary surgeons behind that practice. I spend one day a week delving into his professional and personal life; building up a picture of his character, and his ideals, through the correspondence he received from his peers.

Portrait of Henry Gray

Henry Gray qualified from the London Veterinary College in 1885 and set up a practice in Kensington on Earls Court Road (pictured below), though sadly this original facade no longer exists.

Henry Gray pictured in front of his surgery in Kensington

Henry Gray’s daughter bequeathed his materials to the RCVS in 1955 and now I get the satisfying task of reading, cataloguing and ordering his letters, postcards, research, and notes. It’s a fascinating insight to the work of a veterinary surgeon in the early 20th century and through these letters, I get detailed opinions from Gray’s peers regarding the state of the veterinary profession. I also find out about the diseases they were researching at the time. There is also correspondence from doctors studying human medicine,  because there was often cross-over between human and animal disease, Henry Gray would consult the work of doctors and vice versa.

There aren’t many letters in Gray’s own hand and there is little biographical information about him, but I still build up a strong picture of his character from the letters he received. Gray was described as ‘pugnacious’ and, in letters written to him, his friends would often challenge him on his critical nature. What I admire most about this man was his very clear passion for his profession and his concern for the treatment of animals. He was not only relied upon for his expert opinion on animal treatments, but he was also an avid writer. Gray’s main correspondent was E. Wallis Hoare, the editor of ‘Veterinary News’, who relied upon Gray’s research and writing as content for the journal. Gray also wrote his own papers and was an extremely busy and dedicated man, eventually becoming the editor of the ‘Veterinary News’ himself. Gray was widely read, multilingual, and translated important veterinary works from French and German to English for his peers. Gray was known to be fond of saying:

Gray held this belief in high esteem and from what I have found, he had a real thirst for knowledge and shared it with his peers as often as he was able.

The breadth of topics he researched, and the topics that interested him, seems exhaustive to me –  though he did specialise. Gray became an expert on birds and established one of the first practices that specialised in small animals. He donated some very beautiful books to the library here at RCVS, my favourite is pictured below.

The Speaking Parrots by Dr. Karl Russ (1884)

One of the most surprising things, at least to me, is that vets did not feel respected. Gray’s main correspondents were incredibly dissatisfied with the state of the profession. Gray and Hoare were forward-thinking men who were interested in the progress of veterinary science and education, though Hoare was so dismayed by the men already within the profession, he often discouraged people to enter it. Hoare believed that their work made a better hobby than a living. I have found some quotes in the letters that convey some of the feeling of the time.

“Had I been a Solicitor or Doctor an Engineer or a Tradesman etc – I should have been married ages ago but a horse doctor, a dog doctor … is no catch”

– A. Cholet

The above quote appears in the letter pictured below (which includes a match making request!):

Other notable comments include:

“I am proud of having been an apothecary and medical man, and nearly always ashamed of being a veterinary surgeon”

– H. Leeney

The RCVS was often a favourite topic in the letters and got its fair share of criticism; mainly concerning the education of veterinary surgeons. One remark in a letter questioned why exams for doctors were days long whilst the RVC exam was over in a few hours.  Another comment concerned the females of the profession – specifically Aleen Cust. E. Hoare, who was incredibly progressive, was very outspoken about the attitudes of the council. He writes in one letter:

“ The Lady V.S in Roscommon; I hope to get her to write some articles and show the antiquated members of the council what a woman can do…”

– E. Hoare

I really admire the degree to which these men cared about their work and the reputation of the profession as a whole.

Another significant aspect of cataloguing this collection concerned the time period that most of the letters were written, which was during the First World War. I’ve read firsthand accounts of how the army treated the veterinary surgeons trying to care for their horses. The image below is a section of a letter written by H. Leeney; he rebukes Gray for his critical ways,  but also goes in to detail about working for the army.

There are also passing comments within the letters on major events of the time, such as the sinking of the Lusitania, and these are juxtaposed with the cases they are tackling in their own practices (away from the fighting). My favourite part of working with Gray’s personal archive is that are many facets to the collection. The material is not all clinical and scientific. I also learn about the obstacles the vets faced due to the fact that certain technology was not available. The image below is a snippet of a letter from E. Hoare where he describes his troubles chloroforming a horse.

“I tried chloroforming standing on a big horse last Monday and shall not attempt it again”

– E . Hoare

Throughout this project I  am finding out a great deal about the veterinary profession. Getting to know Gray (and his peers) has helped me understand the challenges and similar circumstances they faced, and how this compares to the present day. It definitely continues to strike me how the members of this profession never wish to stop learning, their intellectual natures and how innovative they continue to be, and often have to be. I am very much looking forward to putting this collection online! Please follow on Instagram where we add our favourite finds from the archives and historical collections.

Helena

The Veterinarian is Complete!

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After starting our huge scanning project with Volume one back in January 2016, we can finally celebrate the release online of the 75th and final volume of The Veterinarian, free for everyone to read in its entirety. The Veterinarian ran from 1828 to 1902 and offers a fascinating insight into the changing veterinary thought throughout a century filled with experimentation and invention.

Click here to browse The Veterinarian online!

This celebration would not be possible without the hard and meticulous work of our Archive and Digitisation Assistants, Adele Bush (Jan-Dec 2016), Helena Clarkson (Jan 2017-Sep 2018) and Jayna Hirani (Sep 2018-Nov 2020), who together created around 65,000 scans and over 1000 sheets of metadata, listing every article title and author.

Copy of a handbill promoting ‘Pin-Cushion Jenny’, from The Veterinarian, Vol 60 No 4, April 1887

About The Veterinarian

Since the Vet History project was first proposed by RCVS Knowledge, making The Veterinarian available has been a key priority. Launched in 1828 by William Percivall and later joined by William Youatt, both critics of the London Veterinary School and eager for reform, the journal captures the birth and development of the veterinary profession in Britain and its place within the context of an explosive era of scientific discovery.

The Veterinarian was one of the major organs of discussion, debate and dissemination of new veterinary practice and theory in Britain. Each issue will typically contain accounts of specific veterinary cases, summaries of current knowledge on specific diseases or injuries, news of developments in legislation or national events, reviews of new publications, and reports from the numerous local and national veterinary societies.

Beyond the strictly veterinary, the journal also covered wider scientific developments of the time. For example, editorials and articles from 1885-1886 discuss the legal implications of Pasteur’s pioneering treatment of rabies, and early examples of ‘Röntgen photographs’ created using X-rays ‘for want of a better title’ were featured in 1897.

‘Röntgen photograph’ of a rabbit, from The Veterinarian, Vol 70 No 5, May 1897

Helping researchers find what they want

The wealth of information contained in this journal covers a very broad range of subjects and includes contributions from many of the most influential veterinary surgeons working in Britain and its colonies. As such, we have worked hard to make sure researchers can easily find and discover articles most relevant to their interests.

Every issue has been digitised individually, and with a full list of contents and article authors. We have also added tags to each issue for specific ailments, anatomy, and organisations. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most used tag on Vet History is ‘horse’, with 966 items!)

The most frequently used tags in the Digital Collections

Finally, you can also easily search for content within each issue by using the full-text search in the Universal Viewer.

One of our regular users of the Digital Collections, Sandi Howie, who is working to complete her doctoral thesis on the veterinary community in late nineteenth century Scotland, told us:

The addition of the Veterinarian to Vet History’s Digital Collections, and the keyword search facility, is transformative of historical research. Veterinary historians can for the first time readily access this key source material at any time and from anywhere. As a researcher, I can’t thank the RCVS Knowledge team enough.

A labour of love

The most recent member of the RCVS Knowledge team to take on The Veterinarian digitisation is Jayna Hirani. As the person to finally take this project over the finish line, she was both relieved and sorry to see the project end. The painstaking process of scanning, cropping, converting, uploading, tagging and creating metadata required incredible attention to detail, but also allowed Jayna to really delve into the content and get a comprehensive oversight of the concerns and preoccupations of vets in the late nineteenth century.

Jayna noticed that the main issue at this time was legitimising the profession, and protecting its reputation from unqualified practitioners, following the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1881. However, another trend was for articles about strange experiments and discoveries about what was and was not scientifically possible – such as transfusing the milk of a cow into the veins of dogs to treat fever and cholera.

Excerpt of article from The Veterinarian, Volume 52 No 1, January 1879

Highlights

Other highlights suggested by Jayna demonstrate the broad variety of the content in the Journal:

An 1872 account of truffle hunting in France, using ‘pig-greyhounds’ and paying them with acorns!

Article from The Veterinarian, Volume 45 No 3, March 1872

An 1890 poem ‘The Doleful Ballad of Germs’ demonstrating that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Poem from The Veterinarian, Volume 63 No 11, November 1890

The first photograph to appear in the Veterinarian of an ox afflicted with laminitis.

Photograph from The Veterinarian, Volume 67 No 8, August 1894

Go Explore!

Issues of The Veterinarian received nearly 10,000 views in 2020, so why not explore the journal for yourself and discover articles about every weird and wonderful subject from around the world, captured through the specific lens of nineteenth-century men of letters.

Click here to browse The Veterinarian online