Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is
Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know? Was that a horse? Arrail? Goat it?
Speaker 1: Take your pick, buddy. Well. The working title for this
Speaker 1: one is history of Veterinary Medicine? Or when did people
Speaker 1: stop only caring about horses and cows when it comes
Speaker 1: to animals? The answer to that question is pretty recently, actually,
Speaker 1: And yeah, and I should just say live stock. Sure,
Speaker 1: just eighteen word title live stock. Livestock is a great word.
Speaker 1: And then masked is also one of my favorite words
Speaker 1: for the kind of earthy homeliness it has to it last.
Speaker 1: The collection of edible nuts that pigs and squirrels, Yeah,
Speaker 1: off of youah, masked acorns, chestnuts, All that stuff is
Speaker 1: under the umbrella of mast don't you? Isn't it like livestock?
Speaker 1: Livestock masked, measuring things by the foot, wearing like a
Speaker 1: cloth hat like it all just kind of has that
Speaker 1: same vibe going on. And I love it all, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I can picture a stinker squirrel just like chewing
Speaker 1: and going, hey, you want to go get some masked.
Speaker 1: We're running low one mass. Let's get some more mask guys.
Speaker 1: After this mask and the other mask. We've only got
Speaker 1: two masks left. All right. Uh, Olivia did a great
Speaker 1: job because when I asked for an article about vetinary medicine,
Speaker 1: I was like, who whoa, whoa, whoa. It was like,
Speaker 1: what I really want is like the history of vetinary medicine.
Speaker 1: Not one of those old kind of articles where it's
Speaker 1: like to become a vet you should. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of that at the very end, but
Speaker 1: I found this endlessly fascinating to see where we were
Speaker 1: and where we are now. Yeah, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the History of dentistry episode you ailed up look at that,
Speaker 1: so um, yeah, you have a thing with history of
Speaker 1: medical fields. Apparently, so we're talking about vets, specifically the
Speaker 1: history of veterinary medicine, and we don't exactly know when
Speaker 1: it starts. Our first unambiguous evidence that people were caring
Speaker 1: medically for animals comes about forty one ish hundred years
Speaker 1: ago in the Mesopotamian city of Lagash, where somebody named
Speaker 1: La Ladina m I was mentioned as somebody who was
Speaker 1: an expert in healing animals. I guess scrawled on a
Speaker 1: bathroom wall somewhere in Lagash. But we presume that the
Speaker 1: people were caring for animals thousands of years before that,
Speaker 1: because we domesticated animals thousands of years before that, and
Speaker 1: just by the very virtue of us depending on those animals,
Speaker 1: somebody along the way figured out it's kind of important
Speaker 1: to keep these animals healthy and happy, and we need
Speaker 1: to figure out tips and techniques for doing that. And
Speaker 1: that was really the birth of veterinary medicine. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're their lives depended on these this live stock, live
Speaker 1: stock mass uh, And so of course they wanted to
Speaker 1: keep these things alive so they could use them in
Speaker 1: all the ways that they were used. Uh. And of
Speaker 1: course we're talking about at the time, like very rudimentary
Speaker 1: stuff like hey, what should we feed them? And then uh,
Speaker 1: let's watch and are they thriving? So let's either feed
Speaker 1: them more of that or less of this. So in
Speaker 1: other words, let's work on their diet. Let's who we
Speaker 1: can get that right, Let's see what kind of like
Speaker 1: herbs and fruits and roots and things like that we
Speaker 1: could use to try and heal them. Uh. There's the
Speaker 1: actual word veterinarian, which is an English term based on
Speaker 1: the Latin verb the the hearing v A v e
Speaker 1: h e r i, which is to draw, as in
Speaker 1: like you know, uh, drawing horse or something like that,
Speaker 1: like a horse drawing a wagon. It was. It was
Speaker 1: because you could win an art scholarship if you could
Speaker 1: draw that. Barrot right. Horses were the one thing that
Speaker 1: I could draw because I had a book once that
Speaker 1: taught me how to draw. Really, so you start with three.
Speaker 1: Is that a book or a movie or something? I
Speaker 1: don't know. It sounds like something done it um? Is
Speaker 1: that what it is? Okay? So you start, You start
Speaker 1: with a big circle, and then you make a slightly
Speaker 1: less big circle a little to the left of that,
Speaker 1: and then a little up into the left above that
Speaker 1: slightly less big circle, you do a smallish circle, and
Speaker 1: then you've got the rump, the front, and the head
Speaker 1: of the horse, and you just start filling lines in
Speaker 1: from there. And believe me, it works. Yeah, it really
Speaker 1: works really well. Can you still draw a horse? I
Speaker 1: haven't tried in a really long time, But will you
Speaker 1: try and draw a horse and put that on your Instagram?
Speaker 1: I would please? I will. By Josh oh that's funny. Um.
Speaker 1: And then look, you know, you can look back on
Speaker 1: that when you're fifty six and have all those fun
Speaker 1: memories like I was so terrible at drying. We can
Speaker 1: pull it out and say look what you did when
Speaker 1: you were Uh. So we're gonna get to the US.
Speaker 1: But all of this action right now, in terms of
Speaker 1: caring for cattle and horses and cheap and things, is
Speaker 1: in medieval or is in Europe. And in medieval Europe, um,
Speaker 1: you might you know, have a status symbol animal like hey,
Speaker 1: I'm a falconer or something. Check out this bad boy
Speaker 1: or look at these regal greyhounds. So they would care
Speaker 1: in that case very specifically, would care for what we
Speaker 1: might think of as a pet. But that was not
Speaker 1: the common thing, and pets as far as veterinary care
Speaker 1: didn't come around so much much later. No, but this
Speaker 1: does support part of a long standing trip Asian that
Speaker 1: exists still today that the the well off to the
Speaker 1: uber wealthy are responsible for funding veterinary practices. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, in in Great Britain, in the United States, UM,
Speaker 1: the ideas were that if you were responsible for um,
Speaker 1: for putting shoes on a horse, if you were a ferrier.
Speaker 1: You also more often I think than putting shoes on
Speaker 1: a horseback, then you would carve their toe nails or
Speaker 1: their hoofs I guess is another way to put it
Speaker 1: if you want to get technical. Um, but there's a
Speaker 1: certain way you can carve them to make them faster,
Speaker 1: to make them more stable, to make sure they're not
Speaker 1: their feet aren't aching that kind of thing, and that
Speaker 1: kind of evolved into the earliest um I guess in
Speaker 1: the US and Great Britain practitioners of of horse medical care.
Speaker 1: If if you went to see the ferrier that he
Speaker 1: could probably help you with your horse, especially if you
Speaker 1: needed your horses John cut Off. Yeah, they they would.
Speaker 1: That's one of the surgeries they would a fairier could
Speaker 1: perform for you. You could also go to a cow
Speaker 1: leach um, which is just kind of what you think.
Speaker 1: It's someone who, uh, you know, someone who takes care
Speaker 1: of hows. I guess it would use leeching methods and things,
Speaker 1: but it was someone who specialized in dealing with your
Speaker 1: sick cow. And again they were the fairiers, and the
Speaker 1: cow leaches did this stuff because they were just around
Speaker 1: them all the time, So it makes sense if you're
Speaker 1: shoeing a horse, you're just you have more maybe an
Speaker 1: intuitive sense of how to help a horse, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, And so you would basically learn
Speaker 1: this as an apprentice, which means that some my good
Speaker 1: ideas were passed along, some really bad ideas were passed along.
Speaker 1: There wasn't any book learning about caring for animals at
Speaker 1: the time, and there wasn't a lot of specialization outside
Speaker 1: of fairiers um and I guess aside from I get
Speaker 1: the impression that cows were getting some side attention here,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, it was horse horse horse.
Speaker 1: Of course, that was like the driving force of the
Speaker 1: establishment of veterinary medicine as a as an actual specialist field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big time. And you might not be surprised. You may
Speaker 1: be surprised to learn that it sort of not quite
Speaker 1: lock step, but it sort of progressed. It feels like
Speaker 1: just behind medicine on humans, Like as we started dissecting humans,
Speaker 1: they started dissecting horses, and it just sort of makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's like, these are other living mammals, and if we
Speaker 1: learn how to study bones and muscles and organs of people,
Speaker 1: then we can certainly learn how to do that on
Speaker 1: this horse A sea change book came along in six
Speaker 1: by Uh would that be Gervaise or Gervaise I'm going
Speaker 1: with Gervaise, Okay, Gervais Markham called the new hotel name
Speaker 1: by the ways mark them. Yeah, oh boy, I'd stay there.
Speaker 1: Um and I love how I like on the nose. No, no,
Speaker 1: the fake name you used to check the name of.
Speaker 1: That sounds like during the January break. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a hotel, Jane Gervais Markham. It sounds more like a
Speaker 1: white heel um law firm. Alright, maybe is that the
Speaker 1: right term, white heel. I don't know, well healed, well
Speaker 1: he whe No, white hot, a white hot law firm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I get you. Now. No, that's a great hotel
Speaker 1: name to check in under Gervais market. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: was back when book titles were more of a description
Speaker 1: of what's in the book rather than and they still
Speaker 1: try and get to that, like we learned that when
Speaker 1: we titled our own book. But they were really on
Speaker 1: the nose. Back then, this was called Markham's Masterpiece spelled
Speaker 1: pe c containing all knowledge belonging to Smith, Ferrier or
Speaker 1: worse leech touching on curing all diseases and horses. And
Speaker 1: I'm not joking when I said this thing was a
Speaker 1: big deal. It was the go to book for two
Speaker 1: hundred plus years. They were printing this thing two hundred years.
Speaker 1: Imagine if our book was printed for the next two
Speaker 1: hundred years, this would essentially be like the Horse Caring
Speaker 1: for Bible, is what it was. The problem is this again,
Speaker 1: a lot of those bad ideas um got put into
Speaker 1: this book too and spread, like using leeches for blood letting,
Speaker 1: um for things like purging, which I think is exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds like, Yeah, exactly, using herbal remedies, some
Speaker 1: of which may or may not have worked. It's not
Speaker 1: like we're saying like, nope, modern veterinary message is the
Speaker 1: only possible way to care for an animal. Like I'm
Speaker 1: sure a lot of these folk remedies did actually work,
Speaker 1: just from you know, people trying them over and over
Speaker 1: again finding this this this is pretty effective. But there
Speaker 1: was also a lot of bunk in there too. Yet
Speaker 1: these books were good enough that they for two hundred
Speaker 1: years they were used to care for horses. I just
Speaker 1: want to make sure that we got that point across.
Speaker 1: Should we take a breaker weight let's take a break, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little riled up. Let's take a break. Good,
Speaker 1: settle downy Okay, Chuck, you talked about a sea change.
Speaker 1: You want to talk about a real sea change. I
Speaker 1: got one right here. There's a guy named Claude borg
Speaker 1: Lot Lot. Yeah. He was a Riding Academy instructor actually,
Speaker 1: the guy who ran the Riding Academy and Leon France
Speaker 1: back in the seventeen sixties. And um, he said, you
Speaker 1: know what, there's not a lot of like formal science
Speaker 1: based education in caring for horses. And I think that's problematic.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to write a little book in seventeen fifty, um,
Speaker 1: talking about how to care for horses. But also I'm
Speaker 1: going to kind of like go to Louis in his
Speaker 1: court and say, guys, this is really, actually very important.
Speaker 1: Horses have an enormous impact on our lives, and um,
Speaker 1: I really think that we should start setting up horse
Speaker 1: veterinary schools. And Louis the fifteenth said, Okay, I'm with you, man,
Speaker 1: Let's let's try it. Yeah, he said, you wanna you
Speaker 1: wanna keep hunting foxes? King Louis said sure, And he said,
Speaker 1: well your horses aren't doing so hot, and there's no
Speaker 1: school to make them feel better, So why don't you
Speaker 1: fund this? And they funded it, I believe, sort of
Speaker 1: temporarily at first, and I guess it proved to be,
Speaker 1: you know, at least successful in off to really put
Speaker 1: it on the books for good. I think what what
Speaker 1: really changed things was something came along called, uh, the
Speaker 1: render pest, which totally sounds like some folk horror movie
Speaker 1: ari aster thing, But the render pest was the cattle
Speaker 1: plague and it hit Europe in a big, big way,
Speaker 1: and we're talking to the tune of about two hundred
Speaker 1: million cattle dying over the course of what is that
Speaker 1: like fifty something years in Europe alone. Yeah, in Europe.
Speaker 1: So that that really made King Louise sit up and
Speaker 1: take notice. So that short term grant become became permanent
Speaker 1: state support. Uh. And this bourge a Lot guy was
Speaker 1: he was a really big deal because he started a
Speaker 1: couple of schools and it's it is what these schools did,
Speaker 1: but it was also these schools then sprouting other schools,
Speaker 1: and the people that he instructed then going on and
Speaker 1: teaching others. It was really just the beginning of a movement,
Speaker 1: which was vet School. And it was good that they
Speaker 1: started that. Um that that that was kind of like
Speaker 1: the ground zero for veterinary medicine because they seemed to
Speaker 1: actually know what they were talking about. They used science based,
Speaker 1: science backed best practices. Um. They It wasn't just a
Speaker 1: lot of hokum, you know, they actually said, does this
Speaker 1: actually work? Let's test it out, um. And so it
Speaker 1: did spread, i think at first to Vienna in seventeen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, about six years after the Leone School was
Speaker 1: set up, uh, London, se Berlin, sevento. And then you know,
Speaker 1: for those of us in America, you're like in America
Speaker 1: in well, it wasn't about a little less than a
Speaker 1: hundred years later beside before America really started to get
Speaker 1: serious about veterinary medicine. Yeah. It was almost as if
Speaker 1: the American colonists um set things up. They were like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna kind of do things like they
Speaker 1: were done a hundred years ago in Europe where we
Speaker 1: came from. Um that like we you know, they cared
Speaker 1: about horses and cattle just in the same way that
Speaker 1: you know, as far as depending on them for all
Speaker 1: the things that livestock provided but it was not. It
Speaker 1: was just way less advanced. They were still doing the
Speaker 1: the let's feed him this and see what happens, and
Speaker 1: and again, this is a new country, so they were
Speaker 1: there was a bit of a learning curve I think,
Speaker 1: as far as um climate and like what's available to
Speaker 1: eat and stuff like that, But it wasn't so different
Speaker 1: that they had to kind of go back a hundred years.
Speaker 1: I don't think they were still using Gervais Markham's book
Speaker 1: right though they were actually right, they definitely were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the thing I saw it described as so in the
Speaker 1: United States in particular, it was just basically taken for
Speaker 1: granted that if you own a horse or you own livestock,
Speaker 1: you the horse owner, the farmer, has the knowledge to
Speaker 1: care for and keep those those animals healthy. That that
Speaker 1: it's your responsibility. That it was just viewed as you know, um,
Speaker 1: veterinary medicine was just viewed as another chore around the farm.
Speaker 1: It was not something that you need a book learning for.
Speaker 1: You didn't need some pencil neck from the city to
Speaker 1: come tell you how to do it right. Um. It
Speaker 1: was just up to the farmer, the horse owner to
Speaker 1: to care for their animal. Yeah, and I've got something
Speaker 1: kind of staggering here that Lvia dug up um that horses.
Speaker 1: Of course, here we go again. Man, it's so hard
Speaker 1: to not say horses were the main animal that everyone
Speaker 1: was concerned with. But uh. There was an analysis of
Speaker 1: advertisements for veterinary remedies found in Tennessee newspapers from eight
Speaker 1: and found that more than half worse from were for
Speaker 1: horses and then following in order, where cow's, chickens, hogs,
Speaker 1: and sheep. And what's astounding to me is that means
Speaker 1: that someone did in an elysis a veterinary remedy advertisements
Speaker 1: in Tennessee It's papers. Yeah, you got me with that.
Speaker 1: I was gonna be like, so you found that astounding
Speaker 1: up pulled it out at the end, some people who
Speaker 1: had too much funding. Do you think O Livia did it? No.
Speaker 1: I saw the paper and I don't remember who wrote it. Oh, man,
Speaker 1: I was so hoping she'd be like, guys, I went
Speaker 1: over and above this time it was me. Um so
Speaker 1: the thing that um oh what was his name, Claude
Speaker 1: bourge a lot, the guy who founded the Leon Veterinary
Speaker 1: Academy that kind of spawned so many others. The thing
Speaker 1: that he worened Louis the fifteenth about like, hey man,
Speaker 1: you really depend on horses a lot. We need to
Speaker 1: keep them safe. That kind of came in bit America,
Speaker 1: horse bit America in the rear end um, because by
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies there was a horse um plague kind
Speaker 1: of like cattle render pest, which, by the way, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I just want to say this. Do you know render
Speaker 1: pest is one of two diseases considered eradicated from Earth,
Speaker 1: the other being smallpox. Yeah, it's almost kind of like
Speaker 1: how smallpox devastated humanity. Render pest devastated cattle for very
Speaker 1: a very very long time. And so we just said,
Speaker 1: we're done with this, and so in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eleven it was declared eradicated. They should decide that about
Speaker 1: all disease. I agree. They're like, we're still making our
Speaker 1: mind up about the other. We're done with this one,
Speaker 1: let's get rid of it. So there was a horse
Speaker 1: plague that came around at least some sort of epidemic
Speaker 1: that really kind of spread throughout the United States, and um,
Speaker 1: it showed America like, hey, you guys really depend on
Speaker 1: horses because the horses all called in sick to work.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. They did, and this is a time when uh,
Speaker 1: there was I think what they responded with was, hey,
Speaker 1: we need to care for our horses. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily medical care. Still, it was, you know, again, let's
Speaker 1: see if we can get their diet better. Maybe if
Speaker 1: these horses are really sick, we should clean their stables
Speaker 1: out more. Maybe we should you know, change their blankets
Speaker 1: out and give them clean blankets, things like that. But
Speaker 1: it still wasn't and you know, they had sort of
Speaker 1: the home remedies and stuff they were still doing, but
Speaker 1: it still wasn't this I guess what would have been
Speaker 1: at the time advanced medical veterinary care happening. No, And
Speaker 1: as a result, because they hadn't really figured this out yet,
Speaker 1: those horses that were sick. Um the fire, the Great
Speaker 1: Fire of Boston in eighteen seventy two burned as badly
Speaker 1: as it did because the fire department basically had to
Speaker 1: show up on foot. There weren't any horses available. They
Speaker 1: were all sick. And also from that outbreak in the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies, the A s p c. A UM developed
Speaker 1: and was actually given policing powers in New York City
Speaker 1: because they would go around and inspect horses out on
Speaker 1: the street to see if they were sick. Because if
Speaker 1: you were an owner and you were making your horse
Speaker 1: work sick, you were in big trouble, especially with the
Speaker 1: A s p c A, because you could make other
Speaker 1: horses sick or you were just doing the wrong thing both. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good to know. And again this is in America.
Speaker 1: They were lagging behind such that they were still uh
Speaker 1: using like you know, charms and rituals and spells and
Speaker 1: things in some kind of rural parts of America. At first,
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny to think about, but this is
Speaker 1: this is what it looked like at the time. Chuck
Speaker 1: tell them how to cure bots, which is parasitic fly
Speaker 1: infection that horses can get. Well. If you're talking about
Speaker 1: the one from Bok mhm, this is from a healer,
Speaker 1: I guess a horse healer in Pennsylvania and boxes that
Speaker 1: parasitic infection. Uh, here's what you would do. I no
Speaker 1: way you're making me read this. Uh. You would quote
Speaker 1: stroke the horse down with the hand three times. M
Speaker 1: so far, so good, lead it about three times, holding
Speaker 1: its head towards the sun. Saying the Holy One saith
Speaker 1: Jose have passed over a field, and there he found
Speaker 1: three small worms, the one being black, another being brown,
Speaker 1: and the third being read thou shalt die and be dead.
Speaker 1: Can imagine passing your neighbor while they were doing this.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't just be like, we need to get locks for
Speaker 1: our doors. They just stroke that horse down three times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So moving on, Chuck. Finally, in the United States, Uh,
Speaker 1: medicine itself wasn't really professionalized until the eighteen forties. Um,
Speaker 1: but around the same time, kind of like you were saying,
Speaker 1: and I think it was great Britain where the anatomists
Speaker 1: and the veterinarians started kind of working side by side,
Speaker 1: are co evolving. A similar thing happened in the United
Speaker 1: States again just a hundred years later. So weird that
Speaker 1: it took that long. And then finally, Um, it was
Speaker 1: in large part thanks to the the Civil War too,
Speaker 1: that gave people a great appreciation of all the importance
Speaker 1: of the horse and how much we needed to care
Speaker 1: for him. The thing is, we're still totally focused on
Speaker 1: the horse, not just in the United States but around
Speaker 1: the world. If you were a veterinarian, all you do
Speaker 1: is horses, maybe cows, maybe chickens if you have a
Speaker 1: huge gambling problem and are in debt or sheep, that's
Speaker 1: but that's about it. Yeah, but really the big focuses
Speaker 1: on horses still just horses, guys. I promise we're going
Speaker 1: to get to doggies and kiddies at some point the
Speaker 1: last two minutes. A big step forward was in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty three there were some veterinary surgeons from seven different
Speaker 1: states who met in New York City and said, had
Speaker 1: some drinks and said, have you seen what's going on
Speaker 1: out there in the country, Like they're stroking horses down
Speaker 1: and like they're doing whitches spells and it's just the
Speaker 1: Stone Age. We need to get it together and said
Speaker 1: They said b to that, and they established the U
Speaker 1: S Veterinary Medical Association, which would become the American Vetinarity
Speaker 1: Veterinary Medical Association, and said, you know what we should do.
Speaker 1: Will let anyone in who is who says they are
Speaker 1: a practicing veterinarian uh that has or even a student
Speaker 1: that has at least three years experience, and they could
Speaker 1: get in if they can practice, if they could pass
Speaker 1: an oral exam like that, you got good teeth. That's
Speaker 1: what I actually thought when I first read that. By
Speaker 1: the way, really for for two seconds, I was like,
Speaker 1: what has that got to do with what a dummy? Uh?
Speaker 1: If they passed an oral exam and could provide documentation
Speaker 1: or even just testimonials that said, you know, these are
Speaker 1: my qualifications. Plus they had to walk around the room
Speaker 1: with a stack of books on their heads without dumping
Speaker 1: them over, that's right, very important work. Uh. And Josiah H. Stickney,
Speaker 1: as a graduate of Harvard Medical School, was the very
Speaker 1: first president of of the I guess at the time
Speaker 1: the us v m A. And that's uh, that's that's legit.
Speaker 1: You know, Harvard Medical School, you're right there in five
Speaker 1: step with with medical doctors at the time. Right. So
Speaker 1: that became the American Veterinary Medical Association, which is still
Speaker 1: around today. And this was the eighteen sixties. And then
Speaker 1: Congress even said, hey, get this, we want to get
Speaker 1: in on the act. If you are a if you're
Speaker 1: in the cavalry, uh, you have to have at least
Speaker 1: one fairier in a regiment, and that fairier. If you're
Speaker 1: going to take care of horses, you have to have
Speaker 1: a degree from a veterinary college. We're gonna start taking
Speaker 1: this seriously from now on, everybody. Okay, no more messing around,
Speaker 1: no more heck craft or anything like that. We're done
Speaker 1: with that. We're gonna get into science now. Yeah, quit
Speaker 1: stroking down that horse and go to school. Uh. A
Speaker 1: lot of veterinary institution and sprang out from this, and
Speaker 1: these were for profit places. The quality was very uneven.
Speaker 1: He still hapn't about that. The quality was very uneven
Speaker 1: at these schools, and most of them were in big cities,
Speaker 1: of course, still focusing on those horses. But then something
Speaker 1: weird happened. The automobile came along. Horses were kind of
Speaker 1: kicked to the curb literally and off the streets, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, a lot of these uh, veterinary
Speaker 1: schools closed up shop. They're like, well, that's it, that's
Speaker 1: that's our practice. What else is there to do? And
Speaker 1: by the end of the nineteen twenties they were all
Speaker 1: but gone. Yes, but there was a an astounding stroke
Speaker 1: of good luck for the veterinarians who were who were
Speaker 1: around at the time. Okay, and that is that um
Speaker 1: up to that point, like if you treated anything but horses,
Speaker 1: you were on a descending hierarchy kind of like I
Speaker 1: was talking about before, and one thing you just did
Speaker 1: not do was treat dogs. If you're a veterinarian, you
Speaker 1: did not treat dogs. And veterinarians were totally fine with
Speaker 1: that until the horse kind of lost its importance like
Speaker 1: you were talking about, and so veterinarians kind of started
Speaker 1: to look around and they realized that in Great Britain
Speaker 1: there was a woman named Maria Dicken who had established
Speaker 1: the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals of the Poor. Yes,
Speaker 1: free treatment to any sick animals anybody brought in. It
Speaker 1: was a real hit among the poor and cheapscape pet
Speaker 1: owners at the time. And um, they were doing it
Speaker 1: without any veterinary training whatsoever. They were just using trial
Speaker 1: and error. And just from that kind of experience, I
Speaker 1: actually got really good at treating dogs. And so veterinarians said, well,
Speaker 1: we don't have horses to practice on anymore. We're gonna
Speaker 1: take over dogs and we're going to go after the
Speaker 1: p ds A and basically make them work with us.
Speaker 1: All Right, I feel like that's a great the little
Speaker 1: cliffhanger there, we're finally at doggies. We're still not at kiddies.
Speaker 1: Yet everybody, believe it or not, they too, even a
Speaker 1: little bit longer. But we'll get to that right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, So where we left off was you introduced
Speaker 1: a woman named Maria Dicken who did great work kind
Speaker 1: of founding the idea of what do you call him,
Speaker 1: like like like you know, like a free animal clinic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: free clinic for animals. Yeah, free for animals. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a word that I can't quint land end on.
Speaker 1: It's free clinic. No, that's not it, but but that
Speaker 1: is it. So it's fine. But in the inboratory, she
Speaker 1: didn't know she did great work. Uh they I think
Speaker 1: they had a patient load at one point. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: but then I'm out of ideas of over four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand um like treatments per year. That's a that's a lot.
Speaker 1: But like you said, the people that studied in school
Speaker 1: to be vets all of a sudden found their callfers
Speaker 1: empty because all the horses were just standing around doing nothing. Now,
Speaker 1: and a very wealthy woman left fifty thou pounds to
Speaker 1: the p d s A and the Royal College of
Speaker 1: Veterinary Surgeons said, well wait a minute, we we should
Speaker 1: have some of that money, because you're giving all this
Speaker 1: money to this place it's not even accredited with doctors.
Speaker 1: And that's what kind of got them together. And they
Speaker 1: started hiring doctors, either kind of permanently as full time
Speaker 1: staff or farming their cases to these professional doctors. Right,
Speaker 1: and so veterinary medicine kind of transitioned at the same time.
Speaker 1: Uh that people in the West and Great Britain in
Speaker 1: the United States as well, We're starting to kind of
Speaker 1: change how they viewed dogs, like their dogs were brought
Speaker 1: in from the outside. They became members of the family
Speaker 1: UM and so as such, people were willing to spend
Speaker 1: money on their medical treatment and they would go to
Speaker 1: medical professionals and the veterinary practitioners were waiting there with
Speaker 1: open arms and UM bills in hand. That's right. Uh
Speaker 1: So we move on to our second hero of the story.
Speaker 1: If you're a cat person, you need to know this
Speaker 1: man's name, and it was Louis or Louie. Do you
Speaker 1: know which one. Let's go with Louis Louis. No, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I realized now it's got to be Louis.
Speaker 1: It is Louis because his name is Louis Commody. That's right.
Speaker 1: Louis Jacob Moody was in a veterinary a specialist in
Speaker 1: New York City and Louis Comody said, you know what,
Speaker 1: A cat saved my life. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: there was a house fire and I guess this cat
Speaker 1: went over to him and went fire and woke Moody up.
Speaker 1: And this is his story. And he said, so you
Speaker 1: know what I'm gonna do. I am going to dedicate
Speaker 1: my life to caring for the cats of the Greater
Speaker 1: New York area. And everyone went, you mean cats? You
Speaker 1: mean these things? We those things we kick off the
Speaker 1: sidewalk because they're annoying us. And he went, cats the
Speaker 1: thing that saved my life, right and um. He actually
Speaker 1: his daughter credited him with elevating cats to the status
Speaker 1: they enjoy now. Again it's like a beloved member of
Speaker 1: the family. Before if you kept cats around, it was
Speaker 1: probably because you had a rat problem. The cats provided
Speaker 1: a function. They were like, you know, working animals in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, and all of a sudden their pets. Um.
Speaker 1: And he wrote a book called All My Patients Are
Speaker 1: under the Bed. It is super cute. Um. So Louie commuty. Second, uh,
Speaker 1: second hero, and then there's another hero that comes up
Speaker 1: in a second. I don't want to jump too far ahead,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna give everybody your name. Her name is
Speaker 1: Lilah Miller, and she is known as the mother of
Speaker 1: shelter medicine. And thanks to her in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: and people working in the decades leading up to that, UM,
Speaker 1: we went from the wholesale slaughter of dogs and cats
Speaker 1: unwanted dogs and cats too, essentially no kill shelters that
Speaker 1: killed just a tiny fraction euthanized a tiny fraction of
Speaker 1: the dogs and cats that come coming to their their doors. Shelter.
Speaker 1: That was the word I was looking for. No, that
Speaker 1: wasn't quite right. No, an infirmary works better, clinic works better,
Speaker 1: laboratory works better than shelter. All of them worked better. YEA,
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're looking for the wrong word, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, So you just gotta own it. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: So we don't have to get to in depth here,
Speaker 1: but suffice to say, like well into the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the way we got rid of um stray dogs and
Speaker 1: stray cats was reprehensible and terrible. I have to say
Speaker 1: one thing, though, I agree, we don't need to get
Speaker 1: into it, but um, there were so you know how
Speaker 1: like there's just like it's literally open season on some
Speaker 1: animals that there's too much of still today they call
Speaker 1: them cullings or whatever. It was like that in the cities,
Speaker 1: but with dogs and cats. But it makes you think like, okay,
Speaker 1: well everybody back then was super heartless. Not true. There
Speaker 1: were sociopathic sickos who would become those people who who
Speaker 1: like killed their quota and there weren't quotas, by the way,
Speaker 1: but they would round these these dogs and cats up
Speaker 1: and carry them off in the wagon. Does wagons would
Speaker 1: be frequently attacked and the drivers like beaten and the
Speaker 1: cats and dogs inside freed by just average residents in
Speaker 1: a city when they saw these wagons go past, even
Speaker 1: back then, so they were like I think most people
Speaker 1: still felt about you know, animals like dogs and cats
Speaker 1: like we do today, just they didn't keep them in
Speaker 1: their house. But they still saw him as these living,
Speaker 1: sentient beings that are worthwhile and shouldn't just be you know,
Speaker 1: murdered for good reason by some the local sicko. Totally alright,
Speaker 1: So back to Lilah, Miller, I'm glad you said that,
Speaker 1: because that's that's a pretty good, uh factoid. I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not for taking matters in your own hands and
Speaker 1: like street violence, but I don't know in that case,
Speaker 1: free the dogs. And I'm glad you said that because
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell if you were bored with my story
Speaker 1: or not. No, not at all. Uh. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of a T shirt Emily has That's a very popular
Speaker 1: shirts is be kind to animals or I'll kill you.
Speaker 1: That's a great So Lila Miller, she was one of
Speaker 1: the very first UH African American woman to graduate from
Speaker 1: Cornell's Veterinary College. She was the one, like you said,
Speaker 1: she came along said we can do better. At the time,
Speaker 1: even if you know, I mean, I guess they were
Speaker 1: mostly kill shelters at the time. Um, but even if
Speaker 1: maybe you were one of the few that wasn't, it
Speaker 1: was still probably like a warehouse, uh that didn't have
Speaker 1: great care for animals. It just was not like what
Speaker 1: it is today. And we have Lila Miller to thank
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah. She um to change protocols, Yeah for sure. Um.
Speaker 1: She she like she basically came into the field and said,
Speaker 1: this is all low hanging fruit. We're doing basically nothing
Speaker 1: to help improve the lot of these animals. So let's
Speaker 1: start doing things like setting up adoption programs, making sure
Speaker 1: they get vaccinated, making sure they get spayed and newter.
Speaker 1: That was a fairly recent thing from the sixties or
Speaker 1: the seventies. Maybe um oh no, I'm sorry from it
Speaker 1: started in the thirties, but culturally it wasn't a really
Speaker 1: big thing until the sixties or the seventies thanks to
Speaker 1: people like Lyla Miller and Bob Barker no joke. Um.
Speaker 1: And and as a result, because of these these protocols
Speaker 1: that she came up within just the complete change and
Speaker 1: attitude she brought to animal shelters, um, the rates of
Speaker 1: euthan asia just plummeted in cities around the country. Like,
Speaker 1: if you want to be grossed out, go look at
Speaker 1: euthanasia rates of cities like Los Angeles or New York
Speaker 1: or Boston in like nineteen sixty. Um, it's just mind boggling.
Speaker 1: And now it's down to just a small fraction of
Speaker 1: what it used to be because so many of those
Speaker 1: dogs are adopted out because of these change of protocols.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Lyla Miller and others like her. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I mean, just so much has changed since then, Uh
Speaker 1: as the dog and cat population has grown, and even
Speaker 1: more and more pets have have come inside. I mean
Speaker 1: you think, like, yeah, people started having pets a while ago,
Speaker 1: and uh, and it's been fairly static. But get this
Speaker 1: stat between the number of pet dogs in the US
Speaker 1: grew by fifty and by almost two thirds of household
Speaker 1: pets owned at least or households owned at least one pet,
Speaker 1: and those pets sometimes had pets where. Uh and just
Speaker 1: the you know, you and I grew up in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties. I'm a little bit older, but I
Speaker 1: even remember being a kid and like very shamefully, I mean,
Speaker 1: we didn't live in the country, but we lived you know,
Speaker 1: we lived in the woods on a couple of acres
Speaker 1: in suburban Atlanta. And like my parents grew up in
Speaker 1: and not rural Tennessee. But you know, they didn't grow
Speaker 1: up in big cities in the nineteen like forties and fifties.
Speaker 1: So like I, we didn't take our animals to the
Speaker 1: that like, we had cats that came and went, they
Speaker 1: weren't inside. We had dogs that were out in an outdoor.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say, like, you know, if people
Speaker 1: have a very nice outdoor enclosure for their dog and
Speaker 1: that works for them and the dog is safe, that's
Speaker 1: a personal choice. I think all dogs should be in
Speaker 1: bed with you personally. But I'm not gonna like, I'm
Speaker 1: not shaming people that might have an outdoor dog or
Speaker 1: cat as long as they're really really cared for. It's
Speaker 1: not what I do. But back then, like our animals
Speaker 1: never came inside. If a cat happened to run inside,
Speaker 1: it was like, get them out of here. And I
Speaker 1: wasn't saying that. I was like, oh, the cats inside,
Speaker 1: the cat's inside. But like the the notion of uh
Speaker 1: and this was like even veterinary care, Like if they
Speaker 1: really really really needed something, our animals would go to
Speaker 1: the vet. And this is like the shameful admission. This
Speaker 1: isn't not trying to like out my family, but this
Speaker 1: is kind of how it was, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And but the notion of taking your animals in once
Speaker 1: a year for a checkup, right, was just people didn't
Speaker 1: do that kind of thing back then. No, it's a
Speaker 1: really relatively new thing, and it's it's evolved in lockstep
Speaker 1: with the amount of money that the middle class and
Speaker 1: upwards were willing to pay to to take care of
Speaker 1: their pets. In the amount of pets. That's part of
Speaker 1: it too. And also I believe that veterinarians have um
Speaker 1: come up with new and amazing ways to to bill
Speaker 1: you that you can't spend money on your pets. Oh
Speaker 1: God bless them. We'd spend a lot of money there
Speaker 1: for sure. And then also there's been um a lot
Speaker 1: more specialization as a result, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: go to the same vet for your dogs, you know,
Speaker 1: Raby's shot and to treat their you know, tumor or
Speaker 1: something like that. Like there's there's pet oncologists, neurologists, epidemiologists, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's really something. But because veterinarians they they don't
Speaker 1: learn essentially as a profession, they went from being completely
Speaker 1: with all their eggs in the horse basket to totally
Speaker 1: abandoning the horse and putting it all in the pet basket.
Speaker 1: And as a result, there's this there's a real shortage
Speaker 1: of rural veterinarians who are large animal vets that know
Speaker 1: how to work on a horse, that that know how
Speaker 1: to work on a cow. Um, and I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: that's going to be something that will have to be
Speaker 1: addressed eventually. Yeah for sure. I mean it's really amazing
Speaker 1: how things have changed in the past, like you know,
Speaker 1: thirty forty years in the U. States. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: want to shout out my vet. Can I do that? Uh? Yes, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shout out Avondale Vetinary Hospital because they're great.
Speaker 1: We followed our doctor Stacy Stacy is her name, when
Speaker 1: she left our old VET to go to a new practice.
Speaker 1: We followed her there because she's so great. So big
Speaker 1: ups to Dr Stacy and Dr Graff and Michelle and
Speaker 1: Kim and Leona and Cat and Abbey and Jordan and
Speaker 1: Jennifer and Carrey and everyone else who helps out there. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're awesome. And I just you know, more and more
Speaker 1: people are becoming and you know, we should mention another
Speaker 1: reason that there's more veterinary care is more people are
Speaker 1: interested in becoming vets. Um that that job has really
Speaker 1: exploded over the last twenty or thirty years. Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: it's good work. Um, I guess I'll showed up mose Vet.
Speaker 1: We're actually torn right now because mose Vet left Dr Jennasco,
Speaker 1: who's awesome. She went to another practice. But we love
Speaker 1: the practice that Mos at so much for like hemming
Speaker 1: and hauling about. That's tough. See, we were ready to leave.
Speaker 1: We're getting a little frustrated with other parks parts of
Speaker 1: the old practice. So when Dr Stacy left, we were like,
Speaker 1: oh great, this is perfect. That's awesome. So that's a
Speaker 1: tough decision for you. It is the compromise we came
Speaker 1: up with. We're just going to get We're gonna double
Speaker 1: up on everything that mogus done. Just go to both
Speaker 1: one right after the other. Man. Double in your bed, Bill,
Speaker 1: I love it. I have a little Mo anecdote if
Speaker 1: you don't mind me sharing, I would love to hear
Speaker 1: about little Momo. So you me told me just this
Speaker 1: morning that Mo has a new um. So you said
Speaker 1: dogs should sleep in bed with you. Mo definitely sleeps
Speaker 1: in bed with us. Um and most developed a new
Speaker 1: habit where uh you mean will be spooning Mo and
Speaker 1: Mo will decide that she wants to get on the
Speaker 1: other side now. But rather than just get up and
Speaker 1: crawl over you mean get on the other side, she
Speaker 1: wants you me to spoon her, but on the other side,
Speaker 1: so she'll tap you me until she wakes up, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and gets that she needs to roll over now because
Speaker 1: Mo wants to spoon on this boy. Mo runs us
Speaker 1: for sure. Well, yeah, at least somebody's in charge, that's right.
Speaker 1: Are you got anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about veterinarians, go get
Speaker 1: friendly with the veterinarian. They'll tell you what you want
Speaker 1: to know. Uh. And since I said that, it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mail, all right, so I can't put it
Speaker 1: off any longer. We're gonna go through some of the
Speaker 1: favorite tangents of two from from Ian Bowers of San Dusky, Ohio.
Speaker 1: Ian put together our Tangents and non Sequiturs list, and
Speaker 1: we said, hey, if you want to keep doing this,
Speaker 1: we'll read it. And so Ian said, great, So here
Speaker 1: we go. I'm gonna go through these pretty quick. But
Speaker 1: these are these are fun walk down memory lane for us,
Speaker 1: because we we forget these jokes all the time. The
Speaker 1: Mystery of the towy Bee Tiles Josh's Love of the
Speaker 1: Alfred Hitchcock presents the three Detectives books. The Mystery of
Speaker 1: Coal episode uh, stainless steel pickup trucks at the Atlanta Olympics,
Speaker 1: and how you still haven't seen them? Yeah, that one's
Speaker 1: popped up a few times. Water Land acknowledgements from May tenth.
Speaker 1: A Beastie Boys dad joke leads Chuck and Josh to
Speaker 1: reciting their favorite Beastie Boys line, and Chuck reveals the
Speaker 1: acts sidentally taught his daughter and the inappropriate Beastie Boys
Speaker 1: lyric when she was too young. Did I tell you
Speaker 1: off the air? No, I don't believe you did. Alright,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna take a short break and I'll let
Speaker 1: you know right now and then we'll be back in
Speaker 1: one second. Oh my goodness. So well, okay, Well that's
Speaker 1: Josh's literal reaction to what I just told him. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, everybody, what a tease. I can't tell everybody sorry.
Speaker 1: Uh oh. Interestingly, Cat's invasive species long discussion right at
Speaker 1: the top of Josh and Chuck's favorite newspaper cartoon strips.
Speaker 1: Sure of course. Uh. May thirty one, The Scintillating World
Speaker 1: of Interest rates discussion of the movie The Green Knight, lean,
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck agreeing that has a flawless streak of
Speaker 1: movie releases rock and We're gonna go see the Whale
Speaker 1: in the theater soon and I don't want to know
Speaker 1: anything about it other than released it. Uh, talk to
Speaker 1: me after you see it. Um. June seventh, Freedom of
Speaker 1: the Press, a very intricate, descriptive three minute discussion of
Speaker 1: how Josh and Chuck would ride a horse over a cliff.
Speaker 1: I remember this one wearing individual parachutes. I remember that too.
Speaker 1: We landed safely, if I remember correctly, we did. I
Speaker 1: like that when that bugs some people, though, UM, let
Speaker 1: me see July five, ultra processed foods. Josh eating hot
Speaker 1: wings while wearing finger condoms, and the director Chuck worked
Speaker 1: for he would eat cheetahs wearing surgical gloves as a
Speaker 1: bit that was Tom Schiller. Uh. Supernova July nineteenth, UM
Speaker 1: discussion of which britpop bands are cool and which ones weren't.
Speaker 1: Planet Sterilizing event should be our britpop album name is
Speaker 1: what I said? And you said Zombie Stars the name
Speaker 1: of our britpop band. Those two still work really well,
Speaker 1: I agree, silly string Uh we Josh brings up a
Speaker 1: video of a dog that got into a guerrilla enclosure
Speaker 1: at a zoo. Oh. Yeah, that poor dog. I remember
Speaker 1: that side note one of Josh's looser episodes, very amusing. Okay,
Speaker 1: what was it against silly String? Yeah, I I can't
Speaker 1: believe I didn't take silly String seriously. Short stuff, the
Speaker 1: Burner Street hoax, Chuck's daughter's love of the songs girls
Speaker 1: just want to have fun and her brief only girls
Speaker 1: want to have fun and boys do not. M that's
Speaker 1: still ongoing. By the way, is there really Yeah? September
Speaker 1: six about Mallory and Mount everest um oh, not a tangent,
Speaker 1: but Chuck casually mentioned the rope trauma. Josh Josh brussatt
Speaker 1: Bush passed it without asking what happened to Chuck's dismay.
Speaker 1: At that point, Chuck refused Chuck he should say, became
Speaker 1: a big baby and refused to tell the story of
Speaker 1: what happened. Despite Josh asking repeatedly, Chuck said, I'll take
Speaker 1: it to his grave. Classic s y s came moment,
Speaker 1: how the license place work, Chuck, Chuck's incredu incredulity. Sorry
Speaker 1: that Josh didn't know what Sarah about Sans Sara, he
Speaker 1: should say Chuck was a big jerk about the fact
Speaker 1: that Josh to know that that was the one you
Speaker 1: apologized about later, right, don't feel bad and no one
Speaker 1: ever wants to be told who you know? I mean,
Speaker 1: it just made me feel bad all over again. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then finally, from just recently November on Goose Bumps,
Speaker 1: whether all or just some of the members of the
Speaker 1: band Boston to school it in m T Did we
Speaker 1: ever figure that out? They definitely did not, But I
Speaker 1: didn't look it up. I just knew that. Oh well,
Speaker 1: that was very nice of you just gently walked past
Speaker 1: it later on. Thanks Ian Bowers. Once again, this is
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. We'll read them again next year.
Speaker 1: Very nice. Thanks Ian, Thank you for um completing that
Speaker 1: very stressful assignment. We would love it if you did
Speaker 1: it again. Okay, I agreed. If you want to be
Speaker 1: like Ian, you can't ianto one of a kind, but
Speaker 1: you can get in touch with this and send us
Speaker 1: an email of your own, Wrap it up, spanking on
Speaker 1: the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows,