Images From The Past

A few weeks ago we were given three photographs by the great granddaughter of Richard Hughes, a well known veterinary surgeon who served on RCVS council from 1922-1934.

Richard Hughes, 1856-1951, graduated from Glasgow Veterinary College in 1880.  He went on to run a practice in Oswestry from 1882-1926 and was awarded a fellowship of the RCVS in 1893.

An expert on cattle and a well known figure in and around his local community he was known to have a very strong work ethic, his obituary in the Border Counties Advertizer ascribes this to him being “…truly a Victorian in many ways”.

In 1950 Hughes was elected a lifelong member of the National Veterinary Medical Association, illustrating the importance attached to his work and the effect he had on the “status of the profession to which he belonged”.

His obituaries state that he left a lasting legacy, not only within his local community of Oswestry but also within the profession to which he dedicated his life’s work.

Thanks to the generous donation we now have a number of interesting photos to add to our collection.  The first photo shows an RCVS Council meeting in 1927. Interestingly the college is still in possession of a number of the items on view including the boards listing the Presidents of the College and the portrait of the first President Thomas Turner. Sadly though, the rather magnificent stain glass windows visible in the background are no longer with us in their entirety.

A second photo shows a ‘Complimentary banquet’ held at the Trocadero restaurant in 1906 for Sir John McFadyean – it looks a rather grand affair!

The last image is a group photo. The location and year of this image remain a mystery to us so if you have any ideas as to where it was taken and on what occasion do let us know.

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

This 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

Review 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]

Databases:
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

Conferences:
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

A troubled artist: Sir Edwin Landseer

The RCVS headquarters tidy-up has revealed another gem, and led us to discover the fascinating story of a troubled man. Eight large prints of paintings by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873), depicting animals and bucolic scenes, have been discovered.

Landseer (1802-1873), an English painter, was renowned for his paintings of horses and dogs. Included in his artistic achievements are the lion sculptures in Trafalgar Square. His dog paintings of the 1830′s are by far his most popular work, ‘Dignity and Impudence’ (1839) being the most famous of all.

Dignity and Impudence (1839)

The two dogs in the life sized ‘portrait’ belonged to Jacob Bell, a chemist, who commissioned the work. The bloodhound is called Grafton and the West Highland terrier is named Scratch. Landseer cleverly parodies the Dutch portraiture style, where the subject is framed by either a window or a door, with a hand hanging over the edge. According to the Tate’s summary of Landseer’s painting, Grafton was quite the bohemian and was a visitor at several artists’ studios in London but Scratch was Bell’s favourite of the two dogs. Apparently, Bell made a bet with the owner of a poodle that his West Highland terrier was the better looking of the two. Landseer was to be the judge, he took one look at Scratch and announced, without any prompting, ‘Oh what a beauty!’

Bell and Landseer’s lifelong friendship was founded on a mutual love of animals. Eventually Landseer came to rely on Bell as a business advisor, being ill equipped to deal with every day business matters. Along with Landseer’s brother James, Bell oversaw the commission and sale of his portraits, securing the very best prices. He took on rather more duties than a normal business manager might, as he was heavily involved in the rebuilding of Landseer’s home and helped him to purchase land.

Landseer was the youngest son of an engraver and initially developed his talents with his father. He was later sent, along with his two brothers, to study under Benjamin Robert Haydon, the historical painter, in 1815. It was Haydon who encouraged Landseer to study animal anatomy. His early paintings benefit from his excellent anatomical knowledge and portray a variety of moral messages which contributed to his popularity with his Victorian audience. His later work was marred by his sentimentality and the humanization of his animal subjects.

Landseer had social as well as professional success; his friends included Dickens and Thackeray. He moved freely in aristocratic circles and enjoyed royal patronage in the 1840s.  A favourite painter of Queen Victoria’s, she described Landseer as being ‘very good looking although rather short’. Landseer visited Balmoral in 1850 to paint a portrait of the royal family. The painting was never finished, and the failure of his first royal commission greatly contributed to his deteriorating mental health.

In 1840, Landseer suffered a severe mental breakdown, thought to be triggered by the Duchess of Bedford’s refusal of his marriage proposal (Incidentally, the Duchess was the originator of the very British concept of ‘afternoon tea’!). For the rest of Landseer’s life he was plagued by severe bouts of depression, exacerbated by his alcohol and drug use. His family had him declared insane in July 1872. Landseer died a year later on 1 October, 1873. The country mourned the loss greatly, shops and houses lowered their blinds, flags were hung at half mast and crowds lined the street to watch his funeral procession.

See our full collection of Edwin Landseer’s prints on our Facebook page.

A Welsh veterinary adviser

In honour of St David’s Day, the feast day of the patron saint of Wales, I have decided to look at one of the two Welsh language items  that we have in our collection Meddyg y fferm arweinydd i drin a gochel clefydau mewn anifeiliad by James Law which was published in 1881.

Plate 7 Cheviot Ram

I am no Welsh language expert, so a friend has translated the title for me, and her translation leads me to believe that this is a Welsh language version of Law’s The veterinary adviser: being a guide to the prevention and treatment of disease in domestic animals which was first published c1879 running to at least 8 editions.

These English and Welsh versions have a number of features in common: they share a publisher, Thomas Jack of Edinburgh, and their pagination and number of plates and illustrations is the same which would appear to confirm my theory that they are one and the same

As the title suggests the book was intended to be a guide for the farmer to use when they were unable to get advice from a veterinary surgeon.  It offers practical veterinary advice on common diseases of domestic animals which the farmer can use instead of consulting a ‘quack’. 

Plate 5 – Short Horned and Aberdeenshire Polled bulls

The preface of the 8^th edition of The veterinary adviser,  written in 1896 when Law was working in America and at a time when the American veterinary profession was still in its infancy, expresses the aim of the book rather nicely: 

“This work is especially designed to supply the need of the busy American farmer…we have…livestock estimated at $1,500,000,000…affording an almost unlimited field for the…pursuit of veterinary medicine…[yet] livestock is largely at the mercy of ignorant reckless pretenders whose barbarous surgery is only equalled by their reckless and destructive drugging…to give the stock owner such information [to allow] him to dispense with the…services of such pretenders…is the aim of this book”

The book also contains 24 full page illustrations showing breeds of livestock, three of which are shown here, and numerous other illustrations within the text. 

Plate 1 – English Cart Horse and the method of giving draughts to horses

The author James Law, a 1861 graduate of the Dick Veterinary School in Edinburgh, had a prestigious teaching career in both Scotland and America. Following his graduation he taught at the New Veterinary College Edinburgh with John Gamgee.  He was then hired in 1868 by the newly formed Cornell University to teach biology, agriculture and veterinary medicine. It was at Cornell that his later writings, including his 5 volume Textbook of veterinary medicine, took shape.

 The inscription in the front of our copy of  Meddyg y fferm arweinydd i drin a gochel clefydau mewn anifeiliad  indicates that it was owned by a couple named Thomas who lived in Llangyfelach near Swansea.  Unfortunately we don’t know anything about them so we can’t say if they actually used the book to help  care for their animals.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

Verbose and tedious…yet pearls in profusion

When writing blogs about veterinary authors I usually turn to Frederick Smith’s four volume work  The early history of veterinary literature and its British development to see what he has to say.  It is unusual to find that Smith does not have an opinion on the author or book in question.

Portrait of Sir Frederick Smith

We are fortunate to have a large archive of Smith’s material and I know, both from  the sheer volume of material and  the  exhaustive nature of the enquiries (into the content of the book and the background of the author) that are revealed in the papers, that his opinions are based on extensive research though sometimes expressed in colourful language.

Of  Bracy Clark, featured in my last blog post, he has this to say:

“Clark’s style of writing is always verbose and tedious …He perpetually wanders from his subject, so that fragments bearing on the same question crop up in the most unlikely places.  All his works have to be read and annotated in order to collect his views on any subject, especially as he never provides an index.”

He balances this with the following:

“No writer in the profession before or since Clark’s day has brought to bear such a degree of scholarship.  He takes us step by step through a wealth of learning and establishes his point…He had spent years in the study of Latin and Greek, and his deep knowledge of these subjects is reflected in his communications.”

Smith ends his discussion of Clark’s writings by quoting William Percivall in The Veterinarian (1854 p218) who said “No man, perhaps, ever wrote so learnedly so much to so little purpose”.  He agrees that this is indeed the case yet insists within Clark’s works  “pearls there are in profusion.”

If you are doing research on veterinary authors or particular books why not visit us to look at Smith’s research notes and then take a look at the items themselves and see if you agree with his conclusions.

Note
The section on Bracy Clark is in  The early history of veterinary literature and its British development Volume 3 p35-58, it includes a list of around 70 of Clark’s publications.

A model hoof

During the recent reordering of the RCVS headquarters a 6 inch square box was found containing a cardboard model and a folded piece of paper.  Further investigation revealed it was something rather exciting – the pasteboard model of a horses’ hoof which accompanies Bracy Clark’s two page pamphlet A new exposition of the horses’ hoof.

Bracy Clark (1771-1860), the son of a Quaker, was born in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.  According to Frederick Smith, in The early history of veterinary literature and its British Development Vol III, Clark  left school at 14 and was apprenticed to  a surgeon for seven years.    With the founding of the London Veterinary School in 1791 his thoughts turned to studying veterinary, rather than human, medicine and he enrolled at the London school some time during 1792, gaining his Diploma in July 1794. 

Signature and date

After a period touring the continent he opened a practice in Giltspur Street, London which mainly dealt with brewery horses.  Whilst in practice Clark developed an interest in shoeing, establishing a number of forges throughout the country. He was later joined at the practice by his nephew Charles Clark and appears to have retired from active work in 1828. 

In retirement Clark, now settled at Taunton Street near Regents Park, devoted his energies to publishing and re-editing his own works and experimenting with shoeing.  

The pamphlet found in the box A new exposition of the horses’ hoof  is dated 1820 and signed BC.   It starts:

“It would be difficult by words or description alone to convey a correct notion of the framing and construction of the Horses’ hoof: I have therefore invented a pasteboard model, which exhibits its nature and properties very familiarly.

In order to understand it, it will be necessary to take it to pieces a few times, and put it together again, when the simplicity and manner of its construction will be strongly and clearly impressed on the mind”

 Clark explains how to dismantle the model by withdrawing the pins (which can be seen in the photographs) and how to learn more of the structure of the hoof by studying how the labelled flaps connect and move etc.
 

For example writing of the wall of the hoof which has been exposed by the removal of the frog and the sole from the model:

“by reversing the situation of the Bars or Inflexions,…we now discover that they are simply a continuation of the wall, obliquely growing narrower…We can now discern, that the wall and bars are one continued piece…of an obliquely cut cylinder…and the great simplicity and power of such an arrangement must call forth our exulted admiration…”

The final paragraph of the pamphlet which explains how to put the model back together concludes:

“Now the Frog-band…completes the hoof: which is in fact not merely a rude covering of horn, as been apprehended, but an elastic machine, beautifully adapting itself to all degrees of exertion, or repose of the animal.”

Considering the model may be nearly 200 years old it is in very good condition – though as yet I have not been brave enough to take it apart.  This is due to the fact that it had its own lockable box – which in itself gives some indication of its value at the time the pamphlet was written.

At the moment we do not know how it comes to be in our possession but we do know that Bracy Clark  gave a complete set of his works to the RCVS library around the time he became a Vice President of the College in 1857.  So the ‘hoof’ could be Clark’s very own model, we will let you know what we find out!

Paintings made public

In our 168 years we have collected a wealth of paintings, enough to fill a small gallery! We are by no means unique in this so it’s no surprise that the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) and the BBC started an ambitious project to put all the UK’s oil paintings in public ownership online. They have scoured not only museums and galleries but universities, local councils and hospitals to bring the public paintings they may not have the chance to see otherwise. Some of the artwork photographed for this project was hung in fire stations, zoos and even a lighthouse!

Over 3200 venues took part in the project with 211,861 paintings now on the BBC’s ‘Your Paintings’ website. We are proud to have 31 of our paintings included in this national online collection; especially as these paintings are rarely seen by the public.

RCVS President 1904-05

Our paintings on ‘display’ are mostly of prominent members of the veterinary profession, such as past Presidents of the RCVS. One of our favourite portraits is that of John Archibald Watt Dollar, FRCVS, FRSE (1866-1947), who was President in 1904-05.

When Dollar presented his portrait to the RCVS in April 1939 things didn’t go to plan, as a letter to Dollar in May 1939 from the then RCVS Registrar, Dr Fred Bullock, reveals: “I am sorry to have to report to you a disaster that has occurred to your picture [whilst hanging it] … it fell to the ground and two corners of the frame broke off”. Dollar replied to say how he valued the frame highly and had “searched over the whole of the West End to find it,” and when it was eventually repaired, at the College’s expense, for a cost of £3, the restorer  commented that it was “a very good specimen of Florentine work.” We think the painting itself is rather impressive too!

‘Your Paintings’ encourages all visitors to the site to ‘tag’ the paintings in the catalogue. You are asked ‘What subjects do you see in this painting?’ and ‘What type of painting is this?’ These prompting questions encourage you to delve deeper into the painting, encouraging the sharing of opinions and knowledge. Be warned, tagging can become addictive! You will begin to discover artists you have never heard of and learn more about historical events.

My lords, ladies and gentlemen…

Tonight the RCVS President will welcome to the College a group of those who have helped it run smoothly over the last year. Invitees to the President’s Reception include examiners, those involved with the Practice Standards Scheme, members of the House of Lords and House of Commons, presidents of the veterinary and veterinary nursing associations and many others without whom the College could not perform its key functions.

It’s an annual social event that many look forward to, but looking back in the records we find that the first presidential social event happened on the 14 December 1854 (a year after the RCVS acquired its first permanent home) when William Field welcomed over 150 guests to a ‘converzasione’  in 10 Red Lion Square.

The Veterinarian* gives a full account of what appears to have been a grand affair.  The guests were from a wide variety of backgrounds including members of parliament, artists, fellows of the Royal Society, surgeons, physicians … and even a few vets!  Famous names included Sir Edwin Landseer, Michael Faraday, Edwin Lankester, and the Honorable Arthur Kinnaird

Many of the guests brought artefacts with them so that

“on the walls were hung many valuable paintings by Sir E. Landseer,  J. Ward, R.A. and others.”

And the tables were

“covered with microscopes, stereoscopes and photographic drawings.”

There were objects from the museum of the Royal Veterinary College, “including several of unusual occurrence, such as ossification of the brain, heart, lungs, liver, spleen, &c.”  And, in what would appear to be an early precursor of a poster presentation at a conference, “Mr James Turner suspended in the library tablets containing an account of some new ‘pathological facts’ connected with tetanus, as disclosed by the scalpel.”

Statues, ivory carvings and exotic plants from the Royal Botanic Gardens completed the scene.

So what was the point of having all these artefacts and people in one room?  It appears it was to stimulate discussion between the veterinary and medical professions.  The author of the piece gives a clue of its importance to the fledgling RCVS when he writes:

“Such associations cannot fail to promote the best interests of our profession …The free intercourse which…takes place between the members of it and the higher division of medical science…all tend to awaken thought, to stimulate further investigation, and to expand the mind…[and] a more intimate union of the two professions is thus effected.”

The event was so successful that it was repeated three months later… with different objects and different people.

These days the objects on the tables tend to be glasses of wine and canapés, but the opportunity to meet colleagues from across the profession, and from those organisations working closing with it, continues to be important.

*The Veterinarian 1 January 1855 pp 44-47

Changing times

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

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.”

The importance of evidence

 Recently I have attended two events:  the Trust organised symposium on Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine (EBVM)* The sceptical vet: eminence or evidence? and the 50^th anniversary meeting of the Veterinary History Society (VHS)

The EBVM event was the first time in the UK that such a large group of people, from all sectors of the profession, had got together to discuss the topic and to explore ways in which EBVM principles could be implemented.  You can find more information about the day including  speaker presentations here.

In a poll taken at the beginning and end of the day, which asked what challenges EBVM faced, the lack of high quality evidence and difficulties accessing literature rated highly.

As someone whose job is all about making information available this struck a chord and it was still on my mind during the next two days when I was at the VHS meeting. It was interesting, therefore, to hear of similar challenges that were faced by vets in the past.

Close up from portrait of William Hunting in the RCVS Collection

For example  Bruce Vivash Jones talked about William Hunting  (who is one of the lives featured in Bruce’s soon to be published book Twentieth Century veterinary lives) who founded The Veterinary Record  in 1888 in order to make the papers presented at the veterinary societies more widely available.  In the editorial in the first issue Hunting writes:

“Careful observation makes a skilful practitioner but his skill dies with him.  By recording his observations he adds to the knowledge of his profession and assists by his facts in building up the solid edifice of pathological science.”

That seems to me to be a statement of what would now be considered one of the cornerstones of EBVM – that of collecting evidence and contributing it to the knowledge base.

Later in the meeting we heard an account of the Brucellosis eradication scheme of the 1970s and how important the sharing of experience, or evidence, by ‘practitioners in the field’ and integrating it with the research evidence was to it’s success.

In a more light hearted moment VHS members were all chuckling at some of the early images shown in the session on the history of leeching and bloodletting. Whilst these images may have been comical and the thinking behind the practice at the time (which was based on the ancient idea of maintaining bodily fluids or ‘humors’ in balance) is long  discredited there is now evidence of the beneficial use of leeches in human medicine and they are starting to be more widely used in the treatment of animals. 

So perhaps the two events were not poles apart after all and what would now be termed EVBM principles have always been pivotal to  the development of veterinary medicine?

* The Centre for Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine  defines EBVM as:

“Evidence-based veterinary medicine is the use of best relevant evidence, in conjunction with clinical expertise, to make the best possible decision about a veterinary patient. In addition, the circumstances of each patient, and the circumstances and values of the owner/carer must also be considered when making an evidence-based decision.