A bookshelf on veterinary public health

The subject of the relation of animal diseases to the public health, while not by any means unknown to hygienists, is still one which has not until the last few years attracted the scientific study which its importance demands. The above statement is as true today in some parts of the world as it was when it first appeared as the opening sentence in the book The Relation of Animal Diseases to the Public Health, and Their Prevention, by Frank S. Billings D.V.S., D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1884.1 Frank S. Billings was among the first veterinarians to write about the role of veterinary medicine in the prevention of disease in man and animals. Virchow2 had stated earlier that "man is far more susceptible to infection from animal diseases than the latter from similar diseases of man." George Fleming and his European colleagues have provided us with a historical review in Animal Plagues, Their History, Nature and Prevention, in Volumes I and II, London, 18713 and 1882.4 In these volumes Fleming attempted to relate many of the great human plagues with those ofanimals over the thousandyear period he covers, but he could only do this by temporal association as he lacked the technology to establish a hypothesis based on observation of laboratory findings. Regardless of the shortcomings of veterinary science in the middle ages, Smithcor in The Evolution of the Veterinary Art' has presented an interesting historical review ranging from prehistoric veterinary medicine, ancient civilizations, Byzantine veterinary medicine, medieval veterinary medicine, the Renaissance period up to the establishment of the first school of veterinary medicine in Lyon, France, by Claude Bourgelat in 1762. In a later review Smithcor6 discussed the development of veterinary medical science in the United States. The decision to establish a government veterinary service is sketched by W. D. Miles, the medical historian of the National Institute of Health in an Appendix to "'Bovine Tuberculosis Control in Man and Animals."' Miles points out that the Congress enacted the first law to control diseases of domestic animals in 1865. In 1868, the Commissioner of Agriculture appointed a veterinarian to study Texas fever, and a year later recommended that a division of veterinary surgery be formed. A decade later the Commissioner appointed veterinarians in a number of states to report the presence of animal disease. Around 1880 European countries began to quarantine and restrict the importation ofAmerican livestock and meat. These measures increased the pressure on Congress to bring the power of the federal government to bear on the problem. Livestock producers were not the only group in the United States concerned with animal disease. Since some of these diseases such as trichinosis and tapeworms could be transmitted to man, public health officials also were interested. The American Public Health Association scheduled papers on animal diseases from the time of its first meeting in 1873 when Adronian B. Judson, M.D. presented a "History and Course of the Epizootic among Horses upon the North American Continent in 1872-73." Other papers which appeared subsequently in the Association's Reports and Papers included Joseph R. Smith, M.D. "Disease Among Texas Cattle," G. B. White, M.D., "Report of the Examination of Hogs at the New Orleans Abattoir during the Summer of 1881, with especial Reference to the Presence or Absence ofTrichina Spiralis" and Ezra M. Hunt, M.D., "Contagious Diseases of Domestic Animals." Early volumes of the Reports and Papers carried articles by James Law, M.R.C.V.S., Professor of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University who wrote extensively on the establishment of a national veterinary service. Another author to publish in the early volumes of the Reports and Papers was David F. Salmon, D.V.M., who later became the first chief of the United States Department of Agriculture's Bureau ofAnimal Industry. State boards of health went into the area of animal diseases with the employment of veterinarians to take steps to control these diseases. In annual reports of boards of health may be found articles such as "Trichina Disease in Massachusetts" and "Charbon in Massachusetts." Some boards found themselves concerned indirectly with diseases of food-producing animals through state laws which required the boards to deal with adulterated or unhygienic foods. Some