ISRAEL JOURNAL OF
VETERINARY MEDICINE
- THE HIPPIATROS AND THE IATROS: HISTORICAL
PERSPECTIVES
REVIEW
Ohry A .
Section of Rehabilitation Medicine, Reuth Medical Center. Tel Aviv, Israel
Summary
The contributions of veterinarians and veterinarians-physicians to history and to
the history of medicine, is relatively unknown to the readers of medical literature.
Only a few historians recognize that veterinary history has a significant place in
general medical history and in the overlapping aspects of human and animal
medicine.
This review presents some historical facts about the contributions of veterinarians
to medicine. These are a few examples of veterinarians, who became famous as
writers, politicians and inventors.
"But I like the animals better than the `best people'," said the Doctor. ……"Why
don't you give up being a people's doctor, and be an animal-doctor?",asked the
Cat's-meat-Man. (Hugh Lofting [1886-1947]
From the Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home
and Astonishing
Adventures in Foreign Parts. Never Before Published ...)
The BMJ issue on “man and animal” [1] triggered me to write about the contribution
of veterinarians and veterinarians-physicians to history and to the history of medicine.
Only a few historians recognize that veterinary history has a significant place in
general medical history and the overlapping aspects of human and animal medicine
[2].
In ancient Greece, Alcamaeon was the first to dissect animals for scientific purposes
(c. 500 B.C.). The first known animal hospital was built in 273-232 B.C.E. by King
Ashoka of India.
Roman Imperial veterinarians (ueterinarii, later mulomedici) were concerned chiefly
with the health of the equine animals, horses, mules and donkeys (cf. the Greek for
'vet', hippiatros). These animals had great economic and social importance not only in
daily activities but especially in the army, the cursus publicus and the circus races.
Their importance was such that it was in the interests of their owners that their
diseases be carefully observed In consequence, an impressive body of accurate
knowledge about equine diseases, their description, classification and treatment, had
been accumulated by the time of the later Empire, when the Latin treatises were
composed.
These treatises are three: Vegetius (the author of an Epitoma rei militaris between 383
and 450 CE) compiled also a Mulomedicina, in which he mentions Pelagonius, and
makes extensive use of his Ars and of the third veterinary work, the so-called
Mulomedicina Chironis…” [3]. The Greek veterinarian (army ?) surgeon , Apsyrtus
was an important source for all Roman writers, Vegetius , Pelagonius and others
[4,5,6].
Dr. Dolittle was not the first : the Armenian Bishop-physician Blase (Blasius) lived in
a cave on Mount Argeus, and was a healer of men and animals. Sick animals came to
him for help. He was martyred by being beaten ( c.316CE) ,and is regarded as the
patron saint of animals, veterinarians and throat diseases [7].
Veterinary medicine is the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of domestic animals
and the management of other animal disorders.It also deals with those communicable
diseases between animal and human. Zoonoses should be taught together by
veterinarians and physicians. Veterinary medicine has contributed to human medicine
in prevention, research and treatment [8, 9].
The following few historical examples remind us of the connections between the two
branches of medical science:
Carlo Ruini (1530-98) a noble Italian lawyer, wrote the first modern book on horse
anatomy in Bologna, 1598:“Anatomia del cavallo, infermita, et suoi rimedii,
opera..“[10]. Félix Vicq-d'Azyr (1746-1794), French physician and anatomist , the
founder of and discoverer of the theory of homology in biology. Vicq-d'Azyr studied
medicine at the University of Paris. and became a famous animal and human
anatomist and physician. As a member of the Academie des Sciences, a permament
secretary of the Societe Royal de Medecine and a lifetime member to the French
Academy, he also worked as a professor of at the School of Alfort. He was nominated
as chief physician to Marie-Antoinette ,the Queen of France, and in 1789, as the
Superintendent of epidemics. He described the locus coeruleus in the brain in 1786,
and the bend of Vicq d’Azyr. a fiber system between the external granular layer and
the external pyramidal layer of the cerebral cortex, as well as the mattract , which
bears his name. His systematic studies of the cerebral convolutions became a classic.
Vicq-d'Azyr was one of the first neuroanatomists to name the gyri, and he also studied
the deep gray nuclei of the cerebrum and the basal ganglia. In 1794 he died of
tuberculosis [19].
Jean-Baptiste Auguste Chauveau (1827- 1917) graduated from the Lyon Medical
School in 1876. He studied communicable diseases in animals and humans. During a
visit to Claude Bernard’s laboratory in 1859, he met the Dutch physiologist Frans
Donders, who encouraged him to make recordings of cardiac events .In 1886, he
became Professor of Comparative Pathology at the prestigious Museum of Natural
History in Paris. Cardiac catheterization, which has been a standard technique in
humans for more than fifty years, owes much to the pioneering experiments of
Chauveau and Mareyunder made in the 1860s [12].
Salmonellosis is any disease caused by infestation with bacteria of genus Salmonella.
Salmonella is a genus of bacteria belonging to the family of Enterobacteriaceae. This
microbe is named after Daniel Elmer Salmon, who was an American veterinary
pathologist, born 1850 and died 1914. He graduated from Cornell in 1876. He was the
founding director of the Bureau of Agriculture under the Department of Agriculture, a
key person in the New York State campaign to wipe out pleuro-pneumonia in cattle,
and was appointed by the Department of Agriculture to study the widespread problem
of livestock disease in the southern states, particularly Texas fever. Salmon made
unique contributions to veterinary medicine, and became a leader in the field of public
health administration. In 1913 he became the director of a private pharmaceutical
company producing serum against swine cholera in Butte, Montana where he died of
pneumonia [13].
Bernhard Lauritz Frederick Bang (1848-1932) the Danish physician-veterinarian and
bacteriologist, who in 1897 discovered Brucella abortus (Bang's bacillus and
Fusobacterium necrophorum), the cause of contagious abortion in cattle and of
brucellosis (undulant fever) in human beings. Brucell (after David Bruce) is an
aerobic, gram-negative genus of bacteria. Brucellosis is a collective term for a
subacute, recidivating infectious diseases in man and animals, caused by brucellae.
Although long recognized in medicine, antiseptics had been met with little attention
by veterinarians. Bang showed that tuberculosis could be transmitted by cow's milk
by developing isolation techniques. He was the first to use tuberculin diagnostically in
cattle, which had been discovered by Robert Koch in 1890 [2].William Moorcroft
(1767 - 1825) a Liverpool surgeon, became the first Briton to complete a full program
in veterinary medicine. His success in treating animals during a livestock epidemic,
pushed him to study at Alford (1790-91),, and in 1808 he left England to become a
superintendent of the East India company. He explored and later wrote his
geographical and biological observations, of the Himalayas, Hindu -Kush, Samarkand
, Tibet and Afghanistan. [18].The geographical findings were later used by the Great
Trigonometrical Survey of India. He died or was murdered en route from Afghanistan
to India. His writings were published after his death in 1841:” Travels in the
Himalayan Provinces of Hindoostan and the Panjab from 1819 to 1825”.
Fulgence Raymond (1844-1910) first studied veterinary medicine at Ecole d'Alfort.
He became chef des travaux d’anatomie et de physiologie at the school. For a period
he was veterinary surgeon to the French army before going to Paris to study medicine.
In 1894 he was appointed Jean Martin Charcot's successor to the chair of neurology at
the Hopital Salpetriere and is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern rehabilitation
medicine [16].
Arloing-Courmont agglutination test demonstrates the presence of agglutinating
antibodies in tuberculosis. Sarturnin Arloing (1846-1911) studied veterinary medicine
at Lyon and became professor of anatomy and physiology at the Veterinary High
School in Toulouse in 1869 and later in Lyon [17].
Edwardsilela is a genus of gram-negative, anaerobic, rod-shaped bacteria of the
family Enterobacteriaceae and is named after Philip R. Edwards (1901-1966)., an
American veterinary biologist.
Courvoisier and Terrier law is also known as Courvoisier's law, Courvoisier's
syndrome, Courvoisier and Terrier law; Bard and Pic law: clinical sign and symptom
in differential diagnosis of a carcinoma of the papilla Vateri .Diseases causing sudden
painless blockage of the common bile duct, e.g., a stone, usually do not cause
dilatation of the gallbladder. A palpable distended gallbladder, however, indicates a
neoplasm as a cause of obstructive jaundice. An important sign, but nor invariably
present; the gallbladder may be distended, but not palpable. Louis-Felix Terrier
(1837- 1908) studied as a veterinarian at Maison Alfort from 1854 but in 1857
changed to medical studies in Paris. He was a surgeon at Hopital Salpetriere from
1878, Saint-Antoine from 1882, and from 1883 at Bichat. From 1892 he was a
member of the Academy and professor of clinical surgery at the faculty.
Nettleship’s syndrome I, is a chronic skin disease that usually begins during early
childhood. From 1862 Nettleship attended the Royal Agricultural College at
Cirencester and the Royal Veterinary College. Later he obtained medical status at the
London Society of Apothecaries before entering medical studies. Nettleship worked at
the London Hospital under Jonathan Hutchinson then at Moorfields Eye Hospital ,and
later at St. Thomas's Hospital, where he remained for almost two decades. As the
inspector of the Metropolitan poor schools, he initiated parliamentary reforms. The
Nettleship Medal of the Ophthalmological Society was established in his honour.
The discovery of the Nocardia which causes, a disease which manifests itself mainly
in animals but also causes disease in humans ( particularly in immunocompromised
patients such as those with AIDS ) was made by Edmond Nocard (1850-1903).He
studied from 1868 to 1873 at the École Vétérinaire de Maisons-Alfort. From 1873 to
1878 he worked as head of the Clinical Service at the same school. In 1876 he
founded the Archives Vétérinaires, in which he published articles on medicine,
surgery, and jurisprudence. In 1878 he was nominated Professor of Clinical and
Surgical Veterinary [18]. Among his many famous pupils, was, co-discoverer of the
(BCG). In 1880 Nocard became Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux’s assistant in their
classic experiments of animal against Antrax. In 1883, he traveled to Egypt to study
an outbreak of cholera there, but his team was unable to isolate the germ responsible
for the disease. At Alfort, he and Pasteur established a well-equipped research
laboratory, where he developed various laboratory methods. He introduced anasthesia
of large animals with intravenous chloral hydrate, as well as for controlling tetanic
convulsions. He was nominated director of the School, chairperson of infectious
diseases unit, and a member to the first editorial board of the Annals of the Pasteur
Institute. He published “The Bovine Tuberculosis: Its Dangers and its Relationship
with Human Tuberculosis “.He discovered the pathogen of enzootic mastitis.
Streptococcus agalactiae and the virus which causes bovine peripneumonia.
Griffith Evans (1835-1935) was born in India, received his medical training at McGill
University, graduating in 1864 and trained as a veterinarian in London. He served
with the Royal Army Veterinarian Department in England and India until 1890. He
discovered the cause of surra, a fatal disease of horses and camels [19] .Gamgee’s
tissue is a material consisting of a thick layer of absorbent cotton between two layers
of absorbent gauze, used in surgical dressings. Joseph Sampson Gamgee was an
English physician and veterinarian (1828- 1886). He became interested in veterinary
surgery and wrote several papers before studying veterinary medicine from 1846. He,
qualified in 1849, and then began medical studies at University College Hospital in
London. He shared lodgings with Joseph Lister (1827-1912) During his medical
studies, he practiced as a veterinarian.He was awarded the MRCP and FCS (ED), and
worked at the Royal Free Hospital. Gamgee pursued further studies in Paris, Brussels,
Vienna, Florence and Pavia. In Paris he became a friend of Louis Pasteur and worked
at the University of Paris. He treated the wounded from the Crimean War (1853-1856)
at the Anglo-Italian Hospital in Malta.
The names of Jean-Marie Camille Guerin (1872-1961), a French veterinarian, and his
colleague, the physician and bacteriologist Leon Charles Albert Calmette (18631933), are connected with attenuated strain of Mycobacterium bovis used in the
vaccine for immunization against tuberculosis. During his studies at Ecole Veterinaire
de Maisons-Alfort, Guerin was strongly influenced by Nocard . Guerin was elected
President de l'Academie Veterinaire de France in 1949, and President del'Academie
de Medicine in 1951[20].
Finally, veterinarians who contributed neither to medicine nor to veterinary medicine
include:
John Boyd Dunlop (1840-1920) the inventor of the pneumatic tyre. He practiced as
aveterinarian in Edinburgh and Belfast. In 1887 he began his experiments to make a
child’s tricycle ride smoothly, when he filled rubber tubes with air. He patented the
new tyre, and with WH Du Cros created the Dunlop rubber company. He sold his
rights to Du Cros and settled in Dublin.
Tscingis Aitmatov (1928- ) is a leading Kyrgiz novelist, short-story writer, translator
and journalist, who was initially trained as veterinary surgeon and a researcher, but
later studied at Moscow’s Gorky Literary Institute.
Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara (1924- ) was the first Prime Minister and President of The
Gambia. He studied at Glasgow University veterinary college, was appointed
principal veterinary officer in the British Colony of Gambia, but left this work and
became politically active.
Stefan Zeromsky (1864-1925) is a well known Polish novelist who wrote in
naturalistic-lyrical style. He finished his veterinary studies at Warsaw University, but
worked as a teacher and librarian. Arrested by the Russians as a nationalistic activist,
he left for Paris and became a successful writer.
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