Historical Summary

Animal ethics, a moral concern for animals’ interests and well-being, did not figure prominently in the earliest years of veterinary medicine in the United States. With notable exceptions such as Benjamin Rush’s 1807 statement about ethical values (Rush 1808), the humane treatment of animals was largely absent from veterinary discourse in the United States before the 1860s. Instead, the primary focus of veterinary leaders was to establish the profession’s status, legitimacy, and educational institutions. In the years following the Civil War, veterinarians found viable livelihoods and asserted their authority in a range of matters bearing on the treatment and care of animals, working closely with local, state, and federal government and other stakeholders. Collaborating with the newly formed societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals on public health, safety, and humane concerns, veterinarians began to engage more meaningfully with matters of ethical importance.

The creation of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) within the federal government in 1884 marked the advent of an influential veterinary establishment. The BAI championed a centralized, professional, and scientific approach to the management of animals as resources and the nationwide protection of human health and economic interests tied to animal production. The BAI’s primary focus was its responsibility to the American public to establish the safety of the human food supply by ensuring the health of domestic animals used for food and fiber.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the transition from horsepower to mechanized transportation and the emergence of a modern industrial economy created apprehensions about the future of veterinary medicine and prompted new shifts in practice and focus. By the middle decades of the twentieth century, changing attitudes toward animals and the influence of a revitalized animal protection movement presented other challenges. As the twentieth century closed, continuing social, demographic, technological, and economic transformations triggered additional changes, making animal ethics ever more important for individual veterinarians and veterinary educational institutions.

Contemporary veterinary medicine is a profession whose members provide care to animals, domestic and wild; help to manage the health and welfare of animals raised for food and other purposes; protect public health by working to safeguard the food supply; and contribute to preventing the spread of zoonotic diseases and illness. The nexus between animal health, animal welfare, and human welfare has never been stronger. Given the heightened moral concern for animals now evident throughout American society, veterinarians have ethical, social, political, scientific, and practical responsibilities beyond what even the profession’s most foresighted pioneers could have dreamed.

The Quest for Legitimacy, Status, and Identity (1700–1880)

Before the advent of organized veterinary medicine, the care of animals in North America was rooted in folk treatments and procedures undertaken by do-it-yourselfers and lay practitioners including farriers (horse shoers), blacksmiths, cow leeches, stock raisers, farmers, medicine hawkers, and assorted “quacks” (Smithcors 1963). By the late eighteenth century, expanding livestock populations and concern about disease outbreaks that threatened domestic animals prompted calls for professional education. Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, was one of the earliest proponents of the study of animal disease in the United States. In an 1807 address, Rush spoke of the need to attend to “the health of those domestic animals which constitute a part of our aliment, in order to prevent our contracting disease by eating them.” Rush included a moral argument, too, affirming the human obligation to treat animals kindly and lessen their miseries. He cited the works of David Hartley (1705–1757), a pioneer of utilitarian philosophy who had written on animal intelligence; John Hildrop (d. 1756), author of a book arguing that animals had immortal souls; the Genesis-derived concept of stewardship; and the common principle that the service of animals warranted them due consideration (Rush 1808; Blaisdell 1990; Unti 2002).

Individuals like Rush and the English veterinarian William Youatt (1839) were exceptions, however, in their focus on humane principles. Given its practical and utilitarian origins in agricultural practice and the care and husbandry of working animals, veterinary medicine lacked a focus on humane ethics in its early years. A rudimentary ethics emerged with the establishment of the first veterinary colleges and the long transition of veterinary practice from farriery and other tradesman’s occupations to an authentic scientific profession. To the extent that it existed at all, veterinary ethics centered on business practices, sound production and husbandry procedures, and public health responsibilities rather than humane concern for animals.

There were few professionally educated veterinarians in the country at this time and those identifying themselves as practitioners included a few individuals trained in Europe and the UK as well as the farriers, farmers, medical doctors, tonic salesmen, and other self-taught specialists who treated horses and cattle. Anyone interested in learning about veterinary care could do so through the frequently reprinted books of English veterinarians like Edward Mayhew and Youatt, or from the more popular advice manuals that circulated widely. Some works offered sensible suggestions pertaining to improved sanitation in stables, isolation or destruction of diseased horses, and proper feeding and nutrition. However, suggested remedies also included extreme “heroic” measures still used in human medicine at the time, like bleeding, blistering, emetics, and lead or mercury-based compounds. As was the case in human medicine, veterinary diagnostics remained poor (Youatt 1839; Mayhew 1865; McShane and Tarr 2007).

In the mid-nineteenth century, cities were full of animals, encompassing domestic, semidomesticated, and undomesticated species. Urban horse populations rapidly expanded and cattle, dairy cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens, along with corrals, dairy stalls, feedlots, ranches, and slaughterhouses, were dispersed throughout cities. Such animals existed primarily to satisfy the needs of humans and the demands of a burgeoning urban industrial order. As a result, animals were incorporated into the metropolitan economy during the years leading up to the Civil War. This provided professional opportunities and made possible full-time careers in the veterinary field. Veterinarians provided care for the most economically valued animals to safeguard their health and the profits of their owners (Teigen 2000; Unti 2002; Robichaud 2019).

Veterinary medicine was a largely urban profession treating the equine populations of America’s growing cities and the number of veterinarians in practice was small. Calls for practitioners with better training prompted the founding of private urban veterinary colleges and short-lived schools opened in Massachusetts, New York, and Philadelphia in the 1850s. The epizootics that occurred after the Civil War catalyzed the further growth of veterinary institutions. By 1879, of the first 6 veterinary colleges founded in the United States, just 4 were in operation, but between 1879 and 1900, 19 new schools opened (Smithcors 1963; Greene 2008).

The profession’s ranks filled out under the dynamic leadership of foreign-born educators who pushed for a science-based discipline, a focus on public health, educational institutions with rigorous admissions standards, and government support for education and research. The era’s most prominent veterinarians included Alexandre Liautard (France) and James Law (Scotland), who would both help to educate some of the most important figures in the field (Smithcors 1963; Dunlop and Williams 1996; Murnane 2008).

Liautard (1835–1918), founder of the American Veterinary College and Hospital (1875–1899), was the driving force behind the formation of the United States Veterinary Medical Association (USVMA). He also edited the American Veterinary Review, the most important manifestation of the developing profession, from 1877 to 1915. On a monthly basis, the journal presented a digest of articles and abstracts from foreign journals, accounts of cases, news concerning local associations, licensure and veterinary practice acts, and editorials. American authors contributed articles on a range of topics, mostly featuring clinical observations rather than reports of experimental work (Smithcors 1963).

By the mid-1860s, the call for professionally trained veterinary scientists gained urgency in light of recurrent and severe outbreaks of disease in cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses, which resulted in massive animal losses. With respect to the nation’s urban equine population, the Great Epizootic of the 1870s, an equine influenza outbreak that crippled transportation and commerce in major cities along the eastern seaboard, marked an important juncture. As part of their response, municipal health boards began to value, assume, and employ veterinary authority. Veterinarians affiliated with these boards had the power to condemn diseased and unsound animals and to impose quarantine rules for reducing transmission of glanders and other illnesses (Unti 2002; McShane and Tarr 2007; Murnane 2008; Freeberg 2020).

The emergence of organized animal protection in the 1860s provided a direct stimulus to the consideration of ethics in veterinary medicine. Animal protection was a movement dedicated to improving the treatment of animals on moral grounds. After Henry Bergh launched the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in 1866, societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals proliferated throughout the United States, pursuing an ambitious agenda involving the mitigation and elimination of pain and suffering, by educating the public and raising social expectations about the importance of proper care for animals, including those whose owners could not afford veterinary services. Its founders were influential, wealthy, and passionate about their cause.

To some extent, the underdeveloped character of American veterinary medicine in this period left the dissemination of veterinary knowledge and counsel to humane organizations. They positioned themselves as sources of information and action concerning animal care, training, and veterinary health matters, especially in relation to urban horse populations. Most animal protectionists, like most veterinarians, lived and worked in cities, and their welfare concerns were almost entirely tied to problems arising from the rapid incorporation of animals into the urban environment. They were active in debates about the effects of street salting on horses’ hooves and legs, the treatment of glanders and farcy, the removal of exhausted, injured, or dead animals from the streets, and the training and care of balky, uncooperative work horses. Moreover, societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals were strong boosters of professional veterinary education (Unti 2002; Jones 2003).

Law, Liautard, and other veterinarians were advisers in matters that came within the ambit of humane organizations, testifying in cruelty cases, investigating the adulterated milk trade (which relied on cows fed exclusively on grain mash from distilleries and breweries), participating in efforts to regulate the sale of horses in local markets, and speaking out about streetcar cruelties and other concerns. Occasionally, too, as Law did in The Farmer’s Veterinary Adviser (1876), they condemned “barbarous surgery,” “reckless and destructive drugging,” “absolute and painful poisoning,” and “cruel and injurious vivisection” by unqualified practitioners, an indictment of irresponsible treatment on humane grounds (Smithcors 1963). The ASPCA supported a measure to exclude quacks from veterinary practice in 1878, and ASPCA founder Henry Bergh was a speaker at Liautard’s American Veterinary College. In Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania SPCA and the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine had important benefactors in common (Loew 2001; Unti 2002).

Veterinarians and humane advocates who worked together experienced an interesting complementarity. Veterinarians had an unsentimental and clinical view toward animals, generally focusing on their utilitarian value, while humane advocates tended to emphasize sentimental feelings. This did not in itself create great tension. Veterinarians discovered that the broader embrace of an ethic of concern for animals promised benefits to the profession and its status, while understanding that it came with a certain cost. Humanitarians’ unyielding focus on the alleviation of pain and suffering in animals presented a moral and practical challenge for a profession that, like human medicine, had largely neglected such concern.

For their part, animal advocates learned to appreciate the value of practical arguments and frequently sounded the note of human self-interest in taking better care of animals, stressing the probability that kind treatment would bring rewards in the form of animals’ longer years of usefulness, health, and/or enhanced market value. It was not a heartfelt argument but rather one that acknowledged the realities of a world in which animals were going to be widely used and abused. This realism manifested itself in all aspects of animal protection work and was evident in the pamphlets that humane societies produced about the handling and treatment of horses and other draft animals. It buttressed the case for improved cattle cars, too, as humanitarians emphasized the elimination of “shrinkage” – the severe loss of stock and animal flesh during transportation to market (Unti 2002; Greene 2008).

There were exceptions to the comity between veterinarians and humane advocates. Many veterinarians accepted or strongly favored vivisection, the experimental use of animals, while humane advocates supported its restriction or abolition. Some veterinarians also carried out procedures like docking (the amputation of horses’ tails as a whim of fashion) to which animal protectionists objected. In addition, the profession’s gender biases did not always conduce to harmonious relations with the women who predominated within the nineteenth century humane movement (Unti 2002).

Veterinarians were not always in perfect alignment with one another, either. There was an uneasy relationship between veterinarians focused on practical relief of animal suffering and illness (like those who worked in equine practice) and those devoted to bacteriology, laboratory science, and the treatment of livestock herds – a division partly generational and partly ideological. As germ theory emerged as a transformative medical paradigm, educators like Liautard became strong champions, seeking to center veterinary science and practice on the essential challenges of disease control within animal husbandry (McShane and Tarr 2007; Greene 2008).

This emphasis helped to define the mission of veterinary schools associated with public universities. The establishment of 10 state-supported veterinary schools between 1879 and 1918 was decisive in solidifying the professional status of the practicing veterinarian, and in spelling the end of the private colleges that had been the norm for several decades. USVMA meetings were frequent occasions for spirited debate over curriculum standards, entrance requirements, and length of study. State schools were concerned about losing students due to the lower entrance requirements and shorter terms of the private schools. Private schools feared the growing prestige of their new competition, with good reason. The state schools were backed by steady funding, and gatekeeping measures placed both the BAI and the USVMA (rechristened the American Veterinary Medical Association [AVMA] in 1898) in a stronger position to shape and ensure the strength of their curricula and the caliber of their graduates. The state schools, moreover, attracted instructors who could pursue original research as well as teaching, in an atmosphere of freedom and stability that few could attain at the private institutions (Smithcors 1963, 1975; Miller 1981; Loew 2001).

The establishment of worthy institutions of higher learning was essential to the ambitious agenda of leading veterinary educators. In an 1878 report to the Pennsylvania Board of Agriculture, reprinted in the American Veterinary Review, Law sought to lift the sights of the field and the broader society to the larger question of animal diseases communicable to humankind. In its way, it was an ethical project, one designed not only to enhance the profession but to serve the public interest as a matter of the highest moral responsibility. Law argued for specialized qualifications in public health, proposing “a new style of practitioner, more comprehensively educated and equipped than either physician or veterinarian” (Law 1878). In the same year, Liautard, citing the threat of zoonotic diseases, urged the inclusion of veterinarians on local and state boards of health and the establishment of a national “Veterinary Sanitary Bureau” to which state authorities should report. An increasing number of states began establishing the official position of state veterinarian to oversee agricultural and other interests involving animals (Smithcors 1963).

The Advent of a Veterinary Regime (1880–1925)

In her sociological study of veterinary medicine’s origins, Joanna Swabe applied the concept of a veterinary “regime” encompassing “the social practices and institutionalized behaviors that have emerged in response to the problem of maintaining animal resources and protecting human health and economy” (Swabe 1999). This concept is useful for framing the developments associated with the profession’s acceptance of germ theory and the establishment of bacteriology as a discipline, the growing influence of university-based veterinary schools, and the creation of a federal bureaucracy devoted to veterinary science and its application to the management of America’s food supply. All these developments reinforced veterinarians’ claim to authority and status and strengthened the institutions where the new science was taking hold.

By the 1880s, the nationalization and professionalization of American public health was well underway, and local and state public health agencies, the Department of Agriculture, and, ultimately, the US Public Health Service, were all recruiting veterinarians. With the formation of the BAI in 1884, the power of the federal government reinforced veterinarians’ status and scientific authority. Now they became central players in the national effort to control and eradicate animal disease, regulate animal transportation, and ensure proper inspection of the meat supply (Smithcors 1975; Unti 2002; Jones 2003).

Daniel Salmon was the natural choice to head the BAI for he had gained notable attention with his investigation of fowl cholera and was a champion of the germ theory. During two decades of service as the BAI’s chief, he helped to inaugurate the federal meat inspection system, led efforts to eradicate outbreaks of hoof-and-mouth disease and bovine pleuropneumonia, organized a framework for the control of Texas tick fever and hog cholera, established modern quarantine requirements for imported animals, and more. Salmon took a broad view of the profession’s contributions to the study of animal disease. He thought its primary achievements included its roles in elucidating contagious infection, the development of aseptic surgery, the emergence of scientific disinfection, and the use of bacterial products, vaccines, animal extracts, and antitoxins for the treatment of animal disease (Smithcors 1963).

Many of these professional advances came in the wake of growing anxieties within and outside of government that inadequate safeguards to contain and eliminate the spread of contagious disease would lead other countries to prohibit the importation of American animals and animal products. Import restrictions by Great Britain based on concern over contagious pleuropneumonia in cattle in 1878 and by several European nations anxious about trichinae in pork products in 1889 brought things to a head. With the support of meat packers, livestock producers, and other stakeholders, the US Congress passed a Federal Meat Inspection Act in 1890. Additional legislation in 1891 and 1895 to address antemortem and postmortem veterinary inspections and export certification processes would be required to reassure America’s trade partners (Smithcors 1963, 1975).

Via the BAI and other entities, veterinarians trained in microbiology could distinguish themselves as responders to severe outbreaks of animal disease. Limited funding and other restraints made the early years difficult, but the agency’s success in eradicating outbreaks of pleuropneumonia in the west strengthened public confidence as did its work on Texas tick fever, hog cholera, and bovine tuberculosis, and its successful production of tetanus and diphtheria antitoxin. Veterinarians were claiming their place within a growing web of scientific professions and practices in a rapidly modernizing America (Smithcors 1975; McShane and Tarr 2007).

Salmon made a good-faith effort to cooperate with humane organizations in the enforcement of the Twenty-Eight Hour Law (1873), which required that carriers involved with interstate shipping of cattle must unload the animals every 28 hours to provide them with 5 hours of rest, watering, and feeding. The law was the result of an organized campaign by humanitarians concerned about the hardship and suffering endured by domestic livestock in railroad transit from the western range to midwestern and eastern slaughter plants, and anxiety about the effects of fever, disease, and poor welfare conditions on the animals and ultimately the meat produced from their slaughter (Unti 2002).

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