Jeffrey Tucker and Dr. Michael MacKay
Importance of Project
It is not an overstatement to claim that the work Dr. Michael MacKay and I were able to conduct through the benevolence of the ORCA programme represents the cutting of history of medicine research. We have engaged a field that is strikingly underdeveloped, yet extremely relevant to early modern history. Within the last five years the World Association for the History of Veterinary Medicine has fostered new interests in veterinary history throughout this world. Our scholarship questions current interpretations of the emergence of veterinary science and demonstrates that through the creation of organized horse hospitals systematized veterinary medicine developed almost a century earlier than historians have previously claimed. The evidentiary basis upon which we have made these claims is quite robust, but it was determined at the outset of our research that a more thorough study of archival records from the eighteenth century was required in order to assert our findings conclusively. Over the course of the year our focus shifted from the development of horse hospitals in general in eighteenth century England to the work of Andrew Snape, whom Dr. MacKay and I have conclusively shown to be the founder of systematic equine medicine in England. Our research has clearly shown that Andrew Snape leveraged changing perceptions about the value of equine flesh into a new discipline of medical study, veterinary medicine – a discipline that heretofore has been misidentified by historians of medicine as arising in the nineteenth century.
Findings
Dr. MacKay’s earlier research defines the meaning of veterinary science and how it was established by teasing out the cultural value and social perception of the horse body in early modern Britain. It focused upon a world where the horse was at the center of society, ubiquitous and perhaps the most important biological body. It developed an area many scholars are interested in, but few have worked on. It argued that even though veterinary schools did not emerge until the 1790s equine medicine began to be shaped into a distinctly new medical discipline as early as the 1680s. It described the emergence of a specialism, a theme that has been explored in the eighteenth century by historians of midwifery, dentistry and oculism. As such, this new narrative of veterinary science illuminates the history of medicine more generally. In particular this research breaks ground by uncovering previously unknown horse hospitals; facilities that served a central role in shaping the emergence of the veterinary specialism.
Historians have recognized the importance of eighteenth-century human hospitals for decades. By the eighteenth century, private hospitals and infirmaries had become a mainstay in Britain. Through charitable donations, infirmaries were built throughout the country, and by the middle of the eighteenth century, human hospitals had become an important part of medical care for those who had access to them and those who worked at the hospitals. In proportion to their donations, donors were given the right to choose who could be admitted from among the ‘deserving poor’. Hospitals also became an important part of medical education. They gave elite surgeons access to a physician-like training by intertwining clinical and didactic learning. Subscribing members controlled these infirmaries and they functioned through the medical staff, which was, we will see, how eighteenth-century horse hospitals functioned also. This affects not only the foundation of veterinary medicine, but also creates a new comparative area of study for medical historians.
Using this research as a starting point, Dr. MacKay and I focused our attention on the activities of Andrew Snape (1644-1708). Using archival records from the British Library in London, England, Dr. MacKay and I have shown that in the late 17th century Snape successfully leveraged his social connections as horse doctor to the crown to establish schools of ferriery which were grounded in the medical and anatomical theories then current in the important medical schools at Leiden, Netherlands and Edinburgh, Scotland. Furthermore, by cross-analysing the illustrations of Snape’s most important book ‘The Anatomy of an Horse’ with the anatomical illustrations of prominent human anatomists we were able to prove that Snape freely appropriated images and concepts from human anatomy and adapted them to the equine. Historians had previously recognized that many of the illustrations in Snape’s book appeared to be direct copies of the works of Vesalius, Malphighi and others, and this has resulted in a less-than-favorable interpretation of Snape’s anatomical contributions to veterinary medicine – but Dr. MacKay and I have shown that, far from the libertine plagiarist he has sometimes been seen as, Snape’s adaptations of human models to the equine constitutes a deliberate and studied attempt to create a new medical discipline. By establishing theories of horse medicine upon accepted theories of human medicine, Snape attempted to transform equine medicine from a tradecraft practiced by ferriers to a learned discipline appropriate to gentleman. In essence, we have shown that Snape desired to do for horse medicine what Boerhaave, Haller & Vesalius had done for human medicine – i.e. to merge the theoretical and practical medical arts into the unified body of the physician. Furthermore, Dr. MacKay and I have shown that in copying the images of others, Snape was simply engaging in a practice common to his time – namely, reducing the printing costs of his book by utilizing engraved plates which his publisher had ready-at-hand. In addition, Snape skillfully changed many of the images to make them representative of the horse rather than the human – his illustrations of the horse brain, for example, demonstrate clear anatomical knowledge, as do his representations of gestational morphologies. In fact, the supreme emphasis Snape’s book places upon the anatomy of pregnant mares is seen as further proof of Snape’s higher, and as yet unrecognized, intent – by focusing his attentions upon horse reproduction Snape ideally positioned himself to attract the attention of a gentlemanly class obsessed with matters of horse breeding and pedigree.
Results
The findings of Dr. MacKay and my research are so significant that the Journal of Veterinary Medicine has asked Dr. MacKay to prepare a series of articles on Andrew Snape, which are to appear in a special volume of the Journal during the fourth quarter of 2011. One of these articles will focus upon the flawed historiography of Snape’s ‘Anatomy of an Horse’ and the revision that our findings make necessary. Dr. MacKay and I will author this article jointly.