Feature

education Taking a history on veterinary education In 1887, the national Veterinary Association decided that ‘the time has arrived for the profession to be represented by a weekly scientific journal’. The Veterinary Record was the result, its aim being to unite the different arms of the profession under the banner of progress and education, ‘by holding the balance fair, supporting no clique and fostering no individual pretensions’. With reference to medicine, the first editorial also told its readers, ‘we have too long accustomed ourselves to a respectful following of our sister profession’ (Hunting 1888). In 1888, the year of the Veterinary Record’s first issue, British veterinary colleges were already reasonably well established. Organised and continuous veterinary education in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, had been a product of the Enlightenment and represented a coming together of comparative anatomy/medicine and agriculture, set alongside the 18th century ideals of rationalism and improvement. The reference to ‘clique ’ and ‘individual pretensions ’ in the journal’s first editorial, however, indicated the lively nature of British veterinary politics in the 19th century (Fisher 1993). This period featured privately owned veterinary colleges presided over by independently minded individuals, not all of whom agreed with each other! On the continent, by contrast, veterinary education was often founded, funded and primarily organised by the state. Table 1 shows the historical background and institutional development of the British veterinary colleges existing in 1888. This general situation remained until the addition of two new veterinary schools in 1949, at the universities of Bristol and Cambridge, when major changes in veterinary education followed the government’s Loveday Reports of 1938 and 1944, and a new Veterinary Surgeons Act in 1948, which replaced th