Some things in life are free!

If you got excited by our previous post about free library membership for three months (in return for helping us improve our website) then here are some more freebies that you might want to know about – this time with no strings attached.

Sage Publications is currently offering Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery (1999-2012) as a free trial online – check it out while you can!

There are lots of other free things out there. Here are just a few examples of what is available from the following databases:

• BioMed Central – Acta veterinaria Scandinavia (2001-current), Frontiers in Zoology (2004-current), Irish Veterinary Journal (2011-current)
• IVIS – BEVA annual congress proceedings (2008-2011), North American Veterinary Conference (2005-2008)
• PubMed Central – Veterinary Research (1970-2007), Emerging Infectious Diseases (1997-current)
• SAGE Publications – Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation (after 1 year from 1989), Veterinary Pathology (after 1 year from 1964)
• VetLearn – Compendium – Continuing Education for Veterinarian (2001-current), Compendium Equine Edition (2006-2009), Veterinary Technician (2005-current)

To make life easier for you, we have a list of open access veterinary journals on our website.  The list is growing all the time – let us know if you stumble across something we have missed!

Free Three-month Library Membership

Free is not a word you hear very often, not without some strings attached, so here are ours!  If you are going to the BSAVA Congress in Birmingham this April we’d love to hear what you think about our website.  We are looking for 6-10 vets and veterinary nurses to help us fine tune our website to meet your needs.  What do you think works, what you think we can improve on – we’d love to hear it all.

The first of the two group meetings will be held between 12.45-2.15pm, the second at 4 – 5.30pm on Thursday, 12 April.  All participants – as well as receiving refreshments for their efforts– will be offered a free, three-month Trust Library membership or a free literature search.

If you are not familiar with our Library you might not know that we house some 25,000 books, journals, conference proceedings and reports in all disciplines of veterinary medicine.  That’s not to mention the many e-journals we offer access to.  Titles such as Journal of Small Animal Practice, Topics in Companion Animal Medicine, (UK) Vet Companion Animal, Veterinary Clinics of North America: Small Animal Practice and the Veterinary Nursing Journal could be yours to browse for free, for three months.

The venue will be confirmed nearer the date.  Please get in touch with Cherry Bushell (c.bushell@rcvstrust.org.uk / 020 7202 0714) to volunteer for either group or for further information.

To keep up with the news on this event please check our website (http://trust.rcvs.org.uk/news-and-events/news/) or follow us on Twitter @RCVSTrust

A green monkey, a baboon and…

Skeleton of Eclipse in the RCVS Museum

The story of the RCVS Museum Collection is not particularly well known –  any attention it has received focussing on its most famous ‘resident’ the skeleton of Eclipse (donated in 1871 by Professor John Gamgee.)  This is a shame as it housed a number of other interesting items, as a glance at the catalogue (item id 26652) compiled by Edward Reuben Edwards in December 1891 reveals. 

The majority of items listed relate to horses, sheep and cattle but more exotic species are present – the first items are an ‘entire preparation of a green monkey’ and ‘the skull of a baboon’.  Later on we come to the ‘skull of a polar bear’ and, my personal favourite, the ‘trachea of the first giraffe ever brought to England.’  The human animal is also represented by a ‘human eyelid’ and eight skulls amongst other things.

It appears that the care of the Museum Collection was not one of the College’s priorities.  It took 27 years from the first recorded donation to the formation of the Museum Committee, in 1880. Whilst the first official record of the committee meeting is in August 1889 – nine years later. 

This first meeting happened at a time when the Museum was described by Council as being in an ‘unsatisfactory state.’   There were two further meetings in the next nine months, with Council granting £100 to be spent on ‘repairs and other requisites’ and Mr Edward’s appointment at a salary of £3 3/- per week.

Preface of the 1891 museum catalogue

In the preface to the catalogue, Edwards’ laments that “compiling this catalogue has been a work attended by several difficulties, chief amongst which – perhaps – has been the almost entire absence of any history of the individual specimens.”  In fact, he did not include any item that was unidentifiable, with the result that the catalogue only contains 334 items, whilst the RCVS annual reports for 1853-1891 record almost 500 donations.  One notable absence in the catalogue is Eclipse!

Fast forward another 10 or so years and it appears that the Museum and its contents have once more fallen from the radar.  On the 11 April 1902 Council member Professor Albert Mettam says:

“is the Museum Committee ornamental or is it useful. Does it ever meet, or has it anything to do with the museum?  I was in the museum this morning and I think it is more a place to set potatoes in than anything else.” 1

In view of this somewhat chequered history it is little wonder that, in 1925, the RCVS gave up on its ambition to maintain a museum and agreed to disperse the specimens.

Why not check out the list of some of the more interesting donations to the museum that we have compiled from the annual reports and the catalogue?

1. Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons: report of quarterly meeting of Council.  Veterinary Record  19 April 1902 p654

Vets on Top

Round 2 of the Trust’s careers day tour took us to the Hawkshead campus of the Royal Veterinary College on Saturday for the Association of Veterinary Student’s (AVS) Congress.  Over 200 students from vet schools far and wide braved the weather (and their hangovers) to attend.  They were rewarded with a day crammed full of lectures and practical tutorials under the theme ‘Vets on Top’.  Among the expert guest speakers was celebrity vet Noel Fitzpatrick who introduced his ‘Bionic Veterinary Team’.  Previous Trust grant holder Renate Weller also gave a talk and invited students to ‘Design your own Vet School’!

The Trust pitched up a stand in the Careers Fayre and spent the day chatting to students about our Library resources and taking names for our Grants Alerts.  Other exhibitors at the fayre included BEVA, the RSPCA, SPVS and the Worshipful Company of Farriers, who bought along a bounty of stuffed horse’s legs for the students to play with.  Nothing however could quite compete with Pedigree’s free ‘Doggie Bags’, full to the brim with enough free samples and treats for any animal lover to spoil their pet rotten.   While we didn’t have much more than a few dib-dabs to give away, we were however able to entice delegates with our fantastic new Free Library Membership prize draw.  Any final year vet student is eligible to enter and we have 6 memberships to give away once they’ve graduated.  You don’t just have to catch the careers day tour to enter, simply visit http://trust.rcvs.org.uk/library-and-information-services/competitions/ to find out more.

Next stop on the tour will be the University of Nottingham’s Careers Day on 22^nd May

All aboard the SS Templemore

‘We embarked on Friday 10^th November, but owing to bad weather did not leave L/pool [Liverpool] until 12.30 noon on 12^th November’

so reads an entry in a small notebook which is part of one of the treasures of our archives – the Sir Frederick Smith Collection.

Smith sailed for South Africa  on the 12 November 1899 with the 13th Hussars aboard the S.S. Templemore.  This little book is his record of the veterinary care he gave on board as well as in later operations in Natal including the Battle of Colenso, Vaal Krantz and Brakfontein.

In his book A veterinary history of the war in South Africa Smith describes two ways in which horses were transported overseas – they were either carried with the troops on transport ships or they went on board freight ships.

He states that animals conveyed in freight ships suffered ‘a great disadvantage,’ when compared to those on transport ships, as they were accompanied by less experienced men who had many more horses in their care.  So the horses on board the SS Templemore could be classed as lucky!

Two days into the voyage, on 14^th November, the entry in the notebook records the first fatalities like this ’C127 strangulation, found dead, C57 staggers, died, C118 staggers, died in 2 hours’.  It is not clear what C127 etc refers to – perhaps it refers to the location of the horse on the ship or it may be the number attached to the horse by the army.

Over the course of the 4 weeks of the voyage the notebook records a total of 12 deaths and numerous conditions from which the horses recovered.  The only entry for 28^th November records Smith’s own sickness – ‘I was ill in bed all day’.

We also have an album of photos in the Smith Collection which contains a number taken on board the SS Templemore.  These include a photo of a horse being buried at sea, a rather dark image of some animals on the horse deck, and some more light hearted images of  the troops keeping fit by racing each other around the ship and doing exercises as part of their physical drill.

If you can shed light on what C127 etc means do let us know.

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

Images: photographs from the album in the Smith Collection

Slaughterhouses in the Tropics

One of our ongoing library projects is to catalogue the RCVS Fellowship Theses.  The collection spans approximately 120 years and fills more than 20 metres!

Sheep and goats being killed

An interesting thesis, by A. Blake, Chief Veterinary Officer in the Rangoon Municipality, Burma, is entitled ‘The management of slaughter-houses in the East’ and was submitted around 1910.  He draws on ten years worth of experience in abattoirs in the Tropics and temperate zones in order to have “something fresh to say on a subject about which much has been written”.

Blake includes an A1 sized fold out for a plan of a cattle market and slaughterhouse, filled in with watercolour paints.  He also uses some graphic photos of a working slaughterhouse to illustrate his points.

Before offering his advice on the management of slaughterhouses, he explains the eating habits of those living in a tropical climate: “this day our daily bread” is a strictly accurate expression, for each day’s supply is bought each day”.  It is the custom for the cook to attend “the bazaar”, every morning at 5am, in order to buy the meat for the day.

Moving out of the market and to the slaughterhouse, Blake notes that meat would not keep fresh for longer than a day in the heat, so “all operations from the killing to the consumption of meat are finished within 24 hours”.  Before slaughter, animals were housed in “lairs” and kept under observation for four days, to check if any of the animals were stolen or contagious.  Any animal showing symptoms of tuberculosis and Sturgis disease were rejected for food consumption. However, Blake does comment that carcasses showing early signs of cattle plague and foot and mouth disease could often be passed for consumption as long as “the flesh is not fevered and the animal has been well bled,” but the liver, guts and head must be destroyed.

Animal 'lairs'

According to Blake, a slaughterhouse should be off a good road, on the outskirts of town and must be “remote from Temples, Monasteries, Cemeteries and Dwelling-house”.  To allow for a town’s rapid expansion, the site must be set as far from residential areas as possible.  The site must be near a railway – most municipalities banned pigs being housed within their limits and due to the large Muslim population it was illegal to take pigs along a public road, except in a covered cart.

Images from the  Fellowship Dissertation ‘The management of slaughter-houses in the East’ by A. Blake, c.1910

View our Fellowship Theses here: http://library.rcvstrust.org.uk

Behind the scenes at the Library

Library staff are busy planning an open day on Friday 3^rd February from 10.30 am – 4 pm as part of  National Libraries Day (which is on Saturday 4th February).

As well as giving all those who come to visit us drinks and nibbles, we will be offering you the chance to have a behind the scenes look at what we do.

There are also  two prizes to be won as part of our celebration of all that is good about libraries.

Use it, Love it, Join it!

The strap line for National Libraries Day is ‘Use it, Love it, Join it’.

Use it – anyone who uses our services between 30 January and 10 February will get a chance to win £50 of vouchers for our services.

Join it – our Library membership scheme!  Current members on the 4^th February will be in with a chance of winning a 12 month extension of their library membership.

Love it! – Over to you.  Let us know why you love the library, or if there is anything else we can do to make you love us more, by sending us a comment.