A Wander in Vetland

by John Hicks

However, some mediaeval treatments were simple, practical, and may have been successful. When Thomas, Archbishop of York was diagnosed with lovesickness in 1114, he was prescribed a bout of therapeutic lovemaking. Castration was also suggested – a rather more traumatic alternative. He spurned both options and died soon after.

  Other prescribed cures were, of course, utterly imbecilic to our way of thinking and it would be a wonder if they were actually used, even four hundred years ago. Robert Burton (1577-1640), an Anglican clergyman, had a cure for depression that, were it proven effective today, would help to revive the flagging fortunes of the sheep industry. It involved boiling up the head of a virgin ram, removing and sprinkling the brains with herbs and then roasting them over hot coals. Three days exclusively on this diet, and the patient would be noticeably happier (or, for obvious reasons, claim to be). I’m sure that those responsible for marketing New Zealand lamb would not exploit such an unlikely cure; but I do wonder if the efforts put into marketing of deer velvet today – especially those proclaiming its aphrodisiac properties – are not built on equally spurious foundations.

  Amongst seventeenth century superstitions was the belief in sympathetic magic. By this perverted logic, the application of a salve to the object that caused an affliction would heal the affliction itself. Thus a salve, or ointment, applied to the weapon that caused an injury was regarded as more efficacious than treating the wound itself. Given some of the filthy preparations used to dress wounds in those days, this may well have been true.

  Appealing to a saint presented a cheaper and far less daunting option than most of these primitive and painful remedies. Patron saints were asked to intercede, depending on their supposed powers. St. Apollonia had all her teeth pulled out with giant pincers when she was martyred, so she was a logical choice for those suffering from toothache; and those with diseases of the breast, quite naturally, sought St Agatha who had had her breasts cut off.

  St. Blaise, Bishop of Sebaste in 4th century Armenia, was one of the most popular of the mediaeval saints. His image adorns church windows throughout Europe. He was the foremost veterinary saint. Even today a ceremony is held on St Blaise’s Day, February 3rd, for the farmers of Naintré in France during which a mass is held and the gospel read on behalf of their cattle.

  St. Blaise is also the Patron Saint of throats because he once cured a boy who had swallowed a fish bone. A Benediction of the Throat is still performed annually at St. Etheldreda’s Church in London:

  The minister requests those who desire their throats to be blessed to come forward to the altar rails. He then repeats St. Blaise’s prayer, after which he takes two slender lighted candles, which have been blessed the previous day, Candlemas Day, and which are crossed and tied a few inches from the ends with a red ribbon so as to form a V, and places the V end of the candles beneath the chin of each suppliant, so as to touch both sides of the neck at once, saying at the same time: ‘Per intercessionem S. Blasii liberet te Deus a malo gutturis et quovis alio male.’ (From The Plague of the Phillistines. See Bibliography.)

  If you were suffering from diphtheria in the nineteenth century, before the advent of antibiotics, an appeal to a saint would certainly be a safer option than losing a pint of precious blood to a physician with his filthy fleam, although the appeal to St. Blaise would seem to offer the risk of singed ears.

  St. Blaise’s intercessions were deemed to be especially potent for pigs and their diseases because he had once persuaded a wolf to return a pig – her sole possession – to a poor woman. Laugh all ye of little faith! But if you were a sick pig would you prefer someone praying for you, or to be on the receiving end of a jolly good rowelling courtesy of Professor Coleman?

  Alas, despite all his miraculous cures, St. Blaise met a violent death. Agricolaus, the governor of Armenia, ordered him to be scourged, then to have his flesh torn by iron combs and, finally, to be beheaded. It sounds barbaric but you don’t have to scour today’s papers too closely to come across similar injustices and atrocities.

  ~

  You would expect, in these supposedly enlightened days, that people would seek a logical, scientific approach to the diagnosis and treatment of disease; but ignorance, superstition and brutality are always ready to surface, and the world is still awash with rampant charlatanism.

  Mrs F, a client whose dog suffered from fits, once gave me a website page advertising a cure for epilepsy. It is widely accepted that even with modern drugs epilepsy can, at best, be managed: never cured. Alas, so it proved with Mrs F’s little Papillon, Alfie. His fits were increasing in frequency and severity despite my best efforts. Laboratory tests had eliminated a host of possible underlying reasons for his distressing convulsions. Epileptic seizures stem from a malfunction in the electrical circuitry of the brain – either as a result of brain injury and scarring, which may have occurred many years earlier – or inherited from parents, as a congenital brain defect which might not manifest until the dog is several years old. Certain lines of certain dog breeds are known to be especially prone to congenital epilepsy.

  In veterinary practice epilepsy is usually diagnosed by the process of ruling out other possible causes of “funny turns” such as imbalances of blood chemistry from kidney disease, lack of oxygen from heart valve defects, poisoning with lead or other toxins, or a viral or bacterial encephalitis. Once again, the clinical history is vitally important. I needed to ascertain what Alfie did before, during and after each fit; how long they lasted; how frequently they recurred; and whether any of his brothers or sisters suffered from fits. A definitive diagnosis can be made from disrupted electrical brain wave patterns recorded on an electro-encephalogram (EEG). That would have been nice, but such equipment and the expertise to drive it are not to be found in Otautau, or anywhere near it. On his history alone, I had a fair idea that I was dealing with epilepsy.

  Clinicians have always been reluctant to admit to ignorance. The less we know, the more we take refuge in jargon. Jargon of ancient provenance is particularly appealing. Why not fling in a bit of French – petits mals (little bads), grands mals (big bads) – before these charming classifications fall into disuse? Unfortunately, it was the big bads that were hitting Alfie.

  Despite all we tried by way of conventional therapy, Alfie was now convulsing on a daily basis and for longer periods of time. His teeth clenched, his mouth foamed, his body arched in spasms, and his bowels voided. Each occasion left him weak and bewildered and his family, naturally, extremely distressed. Both Mrs F and I knew that the time had come to put him out of his misery and let her and her family off the hook. Yet when Alfie came to the clinic for the last time, she clung to a downloaded printout. A “cure” for epilepsy was available on the Internet! You could order “Vet Select Seizure Formula” on line. The grammar and spelling tends to give these sites away. It claimed to be “veterinarian formulated” [I hate to see the noun, veterinarian, used as an adjective or adverb] and safe. The “all natural ingredients” included: “Bupleurum, peony, Tang-kuei, Scute, Chih-shih, Atractylodes, Licorice, Scorpion, Silkworm.” Many more were listed: most as obscure and imaginary as the ones I’ve mentioned. Was the liquorice for flavouring and scorpion to give the mixture a bit of a sting in the tail? But many would be tempted to buy, lured by the mysterious aura of the unknown and the unknowable.

  Was I arrogant to dismiss this remedy out of hand? I gently dissuaded Mrs F from trying it which, as an intelligent woman, she already knew in her own mind. Ultimately her heart followed and she was able to accept that, sadly, euthanasia was the best thing for Alfie and her family. Unsatisfactory as it was, it was the most humane course of action. How easy it is for the unscrupulous to give hope, where there is none, to those who desperately seek it.

  I’m sure that many marketeers would regard this as a tidy little online business with good earning potential – using the latest IT selling techniques… “You can pay by Visa” and “we also accept online checks [sic].” A “Seizure Full Treatment Pack (240 capsules, 1oz. Se
izure Homeopathic)” for only $83! Then that final cheery exhortation: “Add to basket!”

  Unfortunately, those who do are contributing to the descent of our society into basket-case status. If quacks can make a living from such blatant exploitation of the desperate and gullible, it is a sad reflection on how poorly scientific thinking has penetrated modern society. It would be funny if it wasn’t so downright frightening.

  ~

  With Alfie I was dealing with a sensible and intelligent owner. However, there are times when, in the face of insuperable client-driven pressure, the modern vet must buckle and yield to the temptation of artifice or showmanship. Often this is when he is presented with a hopeless case. It was a lesson I learnt well from an older vet, Mike Harkness, when I did the rounds with him as a keen young student.

  We had driven along the narrow twisting road towards Tebay to visit farmer DY’s (Dour Yorkshireman’s) sick cow. Every day for a week, we had brushed aside the sacking doorway and entered the gloom of the stone outbarn where she was housed. The musty, ancient air within was edged with the unmistakable taint of putrefaction. “Daisy” had severe pneumonia. Sulpha drugs, normally reliable, had failed. Daisy continued to run a temperature and lose weight. She wasn’t eating in spite of mega injections of stinging intramuscular vitamins. “Parenterovite”, a concentrated concoction of B vitamins, was an old favourite of Mike’s. It came in glass phials and a knack was required to snap off the neck without lacerating your hands on the fine shards of glass. Mike, with unselfconscious showmanship, snapped the tops off cleanly and sucked the contents into a sterile glass syringe. Immediately, an intense aroma – best described as supercharged Marmite – filled the air. While the city slickers of that era doused themselves in Brut, Parenterovite was Mike’s trademark. It stained his hands and its sharp tang pervaded everything surrounding him. As we clambered into his Landrover each morning we were enveloped in a reeking womb of Parenterovite. It could have been worse. B vitamins are good masking agents for many of the evil smells in the veterinary world. Necrotic afterbirth, essence of footrot, stale dogs’ pee on damp tweed: all yielded to the power of Parenterovite.

  After four days Daisy was still slowly failing. DY became doubly dour: DDY. Mike substituted the sulpha injections for a more expensive drug, penicillin. It was worth a try. DDY looked on pessimistically as with another “Whoa, l’al pet”, Mike stuck a large needle through her tough hide and discharged a syringeful of thick white magic into Daisy’s wasting muscles. There was only the merest groan of protest from his enfeebled patient. This was the 1960’s and penicillin, the miracle drug, hadn’t been around that long. People had undue expectations about antibiotics; but they couldn’t cure everything and Mike was well aware of this. A proud Yorkshireman himself, his accent broadened as he empathised with DDY. The loss of a cow was serious on these small farms. He only had twenty milkers.

  After a couple more days, Daisy’s fever ebbed, but she continued to lose condition. When Mike peeled back the sacking rug, her ribs were prominent. He pulled out clumps of dull, matted hair and applied his stethoscope to her chest, encouraging me to listen too: “You’ll not hear much worse than that, John”. Daisy’s lungs crackled and wheezed. But Mike also guided me to the areas over consolidated lung where there were no sounds at all. He explained about scarring “int’lungs”, and painted a grave picture to DDY of lungs honeycombed with pus. Even if she improved it was only likely to be a temporary remission. She would never be a productive animal again. He appealed to pragmatism. “Nay point in spending good money after bad. Hast’a considered t’knackers?” But DDY wouldn’t accept defeat. From greasy cloth cap to clarty clogs, he was an archetypical Dalesman. He clung grimly to a dying way of life on his remote smallholding. Stubbornness, resilience and determination were second nature to him. Mike understood, so he told DDY about mustard poultices. In brief, a mustard paste was to be applied over Daisy’s ribs and covered with brown paper, and held in place by the sacking cover. It wasn’t as far-fetched an idea as it sounds: mustard plasters, or similar applications of heated antiphlogistene, a kaolin-based paste, applied to the chest, were commonly used by doctors on human patients – even into the 1920s. Who wouldn’t grasp at any straw to treat pneumonia in the days before antibiotics? And if the patient didn’t make it, at least they’d have died like Daisy: feeling warm int’chest.

  Back in the Marmitesmobile, as we drove to our next call, Mike explained that the mustard poultice was unlikely to make any difference to Daisy’s condition, but that it would give DDY something to do, make him feel better, and allow him to come to terms with Daisy’s inevitable demise. Bugger the science: such is the veterinary art. And we would move onto the next topic of conversation.

  Mike, a deeply conservative man, was incensed about the impending introduction of decimalisation. His arguments against this were as emotive and irrational as his approach to his professional calling was not. “Twelve pennies in t’ shilling is alreet ba me” he stormed. “It suits me to ha’ a unit that’s divisible by fower. Hast’a ever heard o’ a cow wi’ five tits?” But it was not really the maths that mattered to me. I was charmed by the language. “Hast’a?” in more formal Yorkshire parlance became “hast thou?” Thee, thou, thy. Why had these remnants survived in this corner of England?

  The stone walls flashed by and at each turn of the lane, from our high seats in the Landrover, we glimpsed ancient stone farm buildings, flag-roofed and cobble-yarded, snuggled in the enfolding skirts of the high fells. I rejoiced that my prospective new career would shake me free from the grey uniformity of city life. Through Mike I was becoming aware that it would be about people as much as animals, feelings as much as facts, history as much as science. Though I had, at that stage of my life, never heard of St. Blaise, I now know that we would do well to remember him. Looking to the future is all very well, but we can enrich ourselves and more truly understand each other if we also have knowledge of our history.

  The veterinary profession itself, which has faced many changes and grown stronger with each new challenge, has an interesting, if largely unheralded, history. So much of its past was intimately involved with one species: the horse.

  Chapter Five

  Equus Dissimile Est

  Four things greater than all things are, -

  Women and Horses and Power and War.

  - Rudyard Kipling, "The Ballad of the King's Jest"

  The early veterinary colleges in Europe were established because of concerns about the thousands of cattle dying from plagues. Considering the general level of ignorance about disease in the eighteenth century, initially there would have been very little that they could have contributed. Overwhelmingly, their experience would have been with horses, not cattle.

  For centuries horses had occupied our lives to a degree we now find difficult to imagine. The numbers involved in public transport alone, were quite staggering. In 1904 The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons met with representatives of the London General Omnibus Company and other local owners, to discuss how to control glanders. Between them they possessed around 145,000 horses. [Glanders is a nasty and usually fatal bacterial infection of horses, mules, donkeys and occasionally humans. It has now been eliminated from most western countries.]

  At the end of the nineteenth century the first “horseless carriages” were appearing. As they progressively displaced horses, they significantly reduced the volume of horse work available for vets. The age of the horse, as a means of mass transport, was rapidly closing. By 1906 there were estimated to be about six hundred motor buses running in London: and they were increasing exponentially as horse numbers declined. In 1908 The Daily Telegraph reported that the London Road Car Company was shortly to dispose of about eight hundred horses. In August 1911 The Veterinary Record (the journal of the British Veterinary Association) reported that the London General Omnibus Company was selling off horses at the rate of one hundred a week, and expected to have taken their remaining ninety four horse-omnibuses off the
road by the following month. A few months later, in the same journal, veterinarians themselves were extolling the virtues of motor cars as necessary adjuncts to veterinary practice.

  Nevertheless, horses continued to play a major transport role throughout Britain, until the First World War. My family in Liverpool ran a modest bakery business, John Hicks Limited that, because it was dealing with cereal grains, also ran a sideline business as a provender (animal feed) merchant. There were no pastures to loose your horses onto in a big city so, in a sense, the provender merchant was the petrol station of its day. The balance sheet for the 5th November 1913 lists 51 horses, carts and harnesses as assets, at a total value of ₤573. Five horses were purchased for ₤149/10/- and seven were sold or disposed of for ₤150/10/-. One van was bought for ₤65. By 1924 the firm was fully motorised and the animal feed side of the business had become negligible. There would have been hundreds of similar-sized businesses throughout Liverpool and much of the western world, all converting to mechanised “horsepower” at around the same time.

  Aside from their declining civilian role, horses had one last, sad, fling serving on the battlefields of the First World War as cavalry mounts, as packhorses carrying machine guns, ammunition and supplies, or as draught horses pulling artillery, ambulances and supply wagons. It has been estimated there were16 million horses involved on all fronts. Half of them died from injuries, disease, overwork, poisoning or exposure and, largely because of the risk of them bringing in “exotic disease”, many of the remainder were shot or left behind rather than repatriated at the end of the war – a sad ending when a close bond had developed between the horses and their handlers after years on campaign. In a rather poignant reminder of this Colonel Reakes, director of Veterinary Services and Remounts (New Zealand Veterinary Corps), wrote: