Meeting Demands for Animal Health: Veterinary Medicine in Rural Southern Ontario, 1862-1939

Abstract

This dissertation examines animal healthcare in rural southern Ontario from 1862, when animal health lectures were first delivered, to 1939, when the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps disbanded in the lead-up to the Second World War. By examining farmers’ access to experiential knowledge and veterinary services in southern Ontario, a region known at the time for its significant contributions to both experiential and institutional knowledge production, this dissertation charts the evolution of veterinary knowledge and the friction that developed between informal, experiential practitioners and a new generation of doctors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this period, the development of the veterinary profession was non-linear, and the lines between experiential knowledge and institutional knowledge were blurry. Significant changes occurred in animal–human relationships and livestock healthcare practices, with farmers, experiential practitioners, and professional veterinarians all contributing to this transformation. The veterinary profession developed in response to demands for its services, adapting to the needs of both livestock owners and state officials, as well as to social, cultural, and economic drivers. The slow and inconsistent transition from practical, experiential knowledge to professional, institutional knowledge was in part driven by the demand for processes that supported public health regulations and food safety. This shift occurred in the late nineteenth century, when Ontario farmers began concentrating on livestock farming and industrializing their farming practices. Increasing urbanization also affected the development of animal healthcare practices. As urbanization progressed, milk deliveries increased and horses were used for urban transportation as tractors replaced horses in farmers’ fields. This transition occurred during a time when the pure milk movement led consumers to demand pasteurization, an expensive industrial process that required substantial capital investments. Increasing investment in industrial farming and growing concerns over the spread of zoonotic diseases among humans and animals led the state to work with the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) to implement training courses for dairy and meat inspectors who were tasked with enforcing public health regulations. OVC prioritized government demand for veterinary services over the burgeoning animal welfare movement in the early twentieth century and interwar period. The decision to focus on livestock healthcare over small animal medicine reflected the profession’s view of the connections among upper-class women, small companion animals, and animal welfare movements increasingly concerned with the well-being of pets. The veterinary profession advocated for stricter legislation to cement its authority in the face of competition from experiential practitioners. However, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the distinction between “folk medicine” and institutional knowledge of veterinary pharmacology was not entirely clear. Instead, professional veterinarians often used similar remedies as those used by experiential practitioners. As legislation increasingly marginalized experiential practitioners, OVC developed extension services that provided farmers and private-practice veterinarians with access to its clinics and laboratories. However, at the same time, OVC also required specimens and blood samples to comply with the scientific principles that guided their research and experiments on animals living in OVC’s barns or on farms across southern Ontario. This research reveals how connections between experiential animal healthcare practitioners, farmers, veterinarians, and the state in southern Ontario shaped the evolution of animal health practices and the development of veterinary medicine.