Animals in the history of human and veterinary medicine

This chapter reviews what is known about their shared histories. It focuses on nineteenth and twentieth-century Western Europe and North America, discusses three animal roles that feature repeatedly in histories of human and veterinary medicine: as experimental material, transmitters of disease to humans, and victims of disease. The chapter demonstrates, there is an extensive body of literature that addresses the history of animals in human and veterinary medicine. The most widely recognised role that animals performed within medical history was that of experimental material. As laboratory experimental material and farmyard recipients of anthrax vaccination, animals were crucial to this process and thereby bridged the realms of nature and culture. In deciding whether to transform animal disease victims into patients, and how to manage their diseases, animal carers and health experts were influenced by the functions that animals performed for humans, and the social, economic and cultural value awarded to them.

Human medicine · Traditional medicine · Veterinary medicine · Human-Animal Interaction Studies · Medicine · Veterinary Practice and Education Studies · Zoonotic diseases and public health

• What’s so special about model organisms

  Open Access•Rachel A Ankeny, Sabina Leonelli•Studies in History and Philosophy…•2011

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