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About Historical Medical Art

The Veterinarian, circa 1878

As it was with most of the healthcare professions, veterinary medicine experienced its earliest evolution from those who treated their own stock and developed a reputation as a practitioner. Historians place the formal beginnings in Lyon, France, in 1762, with the L'Ecole Veterinaries de Lyon under the leadership of Claude Bourgelat (1712-1779). Education within the United States began in private schools with the Veterinary College of Philadelphia in 1852. Alexandre Francois Liautard (1835-1918), a Parisian medical doctor and veterinarian, emigrated to the United States in 1860. He established the American Veterinary College and Hospital in New York in 1875. His program a beacon for advancing urban veterinary medicine.
The first land grant college to open a veterinary program was Iowa State University in 1879. Private schools could not provide the same quality of education for similar tuition and many were forced to close. A notable exception was Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Shortly after the University was founded in 1865. Dr. James Law, a distinguished veterinarian and teacher, trained at Edinburgh Veterinary College in Scotland, was hired to train practitioners. A resolution was passed by the faculty in 1871, required four years of study for a Bachelor of Veterinary Science (BVS) degree and two additional years for Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM), a degree previously unavailable in the United States. Prior to this, most degrees were Veterinary Surgeon (VS).

On June 9, 1863, in the Astor House in New York, the United States Veterinary Medical Association (USVMA) was formed. Those practitioners present were mostly self-educated and few were veterinary graduates. The first president was Josiah H. Stickney, a graduate of medical school in Boston and qualified in London as a Veterinary Surgeon. Alexandre Liautard was elected secretary. The re-naming of the USVMA as the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) took place in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1898.

The first woman to receive a veterinary diploma and succeed in a practice career was Massachusetts native, Elinor McGrath, who graduated from the Chicago Veterinary College in 1910. Cornell University graduated the first woman to receive a DVM degree, Florence Kimball, the same year. Not until the mid-1970's has there been a dramatic increase in the admissions of women to North American veterinary colleges.

Anne Crawford, in her original oil on canvas rendering, has most beautifully brought the broad aspects of the general practicing veterinarian of the past to life.